Arms & Armistice
by HasuHime x
Summary: So many things have been lost: lives, faith, and the point of it all. Can two survivors who've lost everything turn a new page for humanity? - Moderately gruesome injury detail; some coarse language; probable intimate scenes.
1. A Message For The Messenger

"Do it," Gabriel pressed. "Do it!"

"No." The sharp point of Michael's sword retreated from Gabriel's throat, but it didn't matter. His heart was already broken; he would surely die before a tear could even fall from those glorious, cerulean eyes which remained fixed upon his brother as he turned away.

"I would not have shown you such mercy," he admitted, rising, despite the spears of agony emanating from the wound to his abdomen. _Because I followed His orders unwaveringly, _he thought,_ to which there are no exceptions_.

"I know. That's why you failed him." Michael kept his sable, moonlit wings to Gabriel, for fear that the disappointment clearly etched upon his face would spur his brother into another furious, misguided attack. He didn't want to hurt him any more than had already been necessary.

Regardless, Gabriel didn't need to see it to know it was there. It was like bathing in vinegar with third-degree burns. He looked down over the barren expanse of mountain before him, and launched himself into the forceful, winding current of air that weaved among the jagged landscape. _Father, guide me. I don't understand._

Beating his wings only to stay aloft, he let himself be swept away by the Lord's own mighty hand. It took him meandering down, deep into the fractures between the rock where the moon couldn't reach its bright glow, before sending him soaring back up and around the plateau from which Michael now took off in the opposite direction: Heavenward. He felt his brother's heavy gaze upon him as they passed, but the airstream lowered him closer to the dusty desert ground beyond the ledge where they'd fought, and a light diverted his attention.

His descent slowing, there was nothing left but to stretch his wings and allow his feet to touch down in the sand, illuminated by the blinding headlights of the overturned car.

Furrowing his brow in confusion, he approached the abandoned vehicle. The beams of light poured across the dry grass, where shards of glass and debris lay, glistening with blood. They were but the end of a trail, left in the wake of the car's wreckage. Up ahead, the remains of a wing mirror reflected the dying moonlight as the gathering stormclouds swallowed it whole, and beyond, half obscured by the brush and an old, rusty fence, was a girl.

Gabriel recalled the surprising strength of those willowy arms around his throat as he stared at them, now motionless against the darkened road. He'd barely even registered her presence when he'd left her there, focused on the task at hand. Drawing closer, he noted the crimson pool beneath her head, and the unnatural angle of her leg. He felt his knees buckle and hit the asphalt beside her. _How could you ask me to do such a thing and then tell me it served no purpose?_

She lay sprawled to the side, arms outstretched, her long, silken hair across her face. With trembling fingers and cloudy vision, Gabriel raked her locks back out of her open eyes. As he did so, they blinked, flickering among the first droplets of rain. _She's alive!_ He leaned over, sheltering her face, and placed a hand upon her heart.

He kneeled there, still as a rock, pinning her soul in place for almost an hour before he finally managed to heal the girl's body thoroughly. Overhead, the sky cracked and rumbled as the rain thrashed the road and the ebony feathers spread over the length of her body. Her pulse was strong beneath his palm; her chest rose and fell in time with his own, and her turquoise eyes watched in silent bewilderment.

Neither angel nor mortal knew what to do next. He wondered if he should return; if his work here was done. Perhaps it was God's intention that he redeem himself for his failure? In which case, his work here was barely begun. His chest ached and his body felt heavy in the hammering rain, and all the while, the girl only wondered why someone so seemingly fond of destruction would save her inconsequential life.

As swiftly as she'd taken a breath and opened her mouth to speak, however, Gabriel held the tips of his fingers to her lips. He slid one arm beneath her fur-wrapped shoulders, hooked the other under her knees, and lifted her from her almost-deathbed with ease. Standing, he raised his great wings, preparing to take to the roaring skies, but upon feeling a tightening atop his collarbone in the girl's grip on the edge of his breastplate, he reconsidered. He wouldn't frighten her further; he knew she must already be terrified of him, as was often the case when angels appeared before mankind, only this time it was justified.

Instead, he brought his dripping wings around her, crossing at the tips: an impenetrable shield from the storm as Gabriel began walking aimlessly on, away from the now historical little diner called Paradise Falls. He could see a new, burning question form in her bright eyes for every step he took, but they were questions for which he had no answer. At least, no answer he could currently bear to voice. In the meantime, he held her comparably tiny frame close as they travelled in silence.

The wind howled and the storm raged on with a determination Gabriel suspected to be of Heavenly origin. He thought of the explosion, and the mob of angel-hijacked bodies it had expelled, deducing that the Lord was putting out the fire; His own divine form of damage control.

As the miles and minutes passed, he felt the girl's fingers slacken, and by the time dawn broke she'd fallen into a restless sleep. Her face was marred with anguish, though what, precisely, filled her mind, he neither knew nor cared to find out. He lowered his gaze to the dark, feathered refuge in which he'd enveloped her and brushed his lips against her hairline, hushing away her unease.

"You're safe;" he assured her with his deep, lulling baritone, "don't be afraid."

Almost immediately, the troubled creases between her brows melted away. Gabriel kept a close watch over her as the sun began its dazzling, languid stretch across the horizon in beams of copper and glimmering gold, oblivious to the ruin it rose over.


	2. Benevolence

An unnameable speck appeared in the cloud-streaked sky. It wasn't a perfect day, but the sun filtered through the grey here and there in lustrous rays straight from Heaven itself. In the shade of the valley lay a small town, glittering in the distortive waves of heat rising from the cracked, barren land.

As the speck grew, Audrey recognised the distinct, rhythmic movement of wings: it was a bird. She watched it soar closer, through a radiant patch of light from above, which reflected off its brilliant white feathers as if they were polished silver. Instinctively, she raised her arm to her eyes to defend them against the glare, until the bird had cleared the heavenly hole in the clouds and the sun began to creep across the town.

It was getting close enough to identify now. She had thought perhaps it were a dove, but she could see now that it was much larger, and that flat, heart-shaped, dead-eyed face was, unmistakeably, that of an owl. Its plumage glowed even in the shade, and its black, predatory eyes stared directly into her own as she struggled to comprehend how it could be the most beautiful, divine creature she'd ever laid eyes upon, while simultaneously, the most terrible.

She was out of time. In the distance, she glimpsed the town in the valley, aflame under the scorching judgement of kingdom come, before a piercing screech reverberated around her and long, sharp talons gouged at her face.

Amidst the screaming, something captured her wrist: a large hand; she could feel the fingers squeezing against her pulse, and she awoke already in motion, upright and scrambling backward. A massive figure dominated her bleary vision in the instant before she toppled over the edge of the unfamiliar bed, and landed in a gasping heap on the rough but warm, wooden floor. Regaining her bearings, she lifted her head as her heart raced faster than the flutter of a hummingbird's.

On the other side of the room, peering at her with a bafflingly sincere look of concern was a beast that called itself an angel. The events of the previous two days flooded Audrey's mind and a name bubbled involuntarily to her lips.

"Gabriel," she heard herself whisper. A tear of shock tickled her cheek and she quickly brushed it away with the back of her trembling hand.

"You've nothing to fear," he replied, stepping around the foot of the bed and into the morning light streaming through the window above her.

A short, derisive huff of a laugh escaped her as she fell prey to the sarcastic, argumentative defence mechanism she'd developed in recent years – the one which had landed her and her parents at Paradise Falls in the first place. Immediately, though, she regretted it as the sapphire eyes that held her gaze steadfastly, and had appeared so icy and unfeeling in the darkness of the diner, suddenly reflected a depth of sorrow she could hardly begin to fathom. She'd seen that look before... in the moonlight, and the rain; she rested her hand over her heart as she remembered a firm pressure on her chest... and how it had kept her there, in that moment. _Those eyes._

"You saved me," her voice came without warning once more, hoarse and resonant in the tiny, silent room.

Warily, she watched Gabriel spread his long wings back over the bed and perch on the edge above her. In the sunlight, it was easy to see the diamonds that now accompanied the sapphires as his brows knit together and disappeared into the palms of his hands. His armoured shoulders heaved and his remorse was resounding.

Audrey rolled slowly and carefully to her knees, observing him all the while. She'd never felt so confused in all her life. Two equally powerful instincts warred within her, and the peculiarity of the situation lent no help to her conflicted rationale.

_If he intended to kill me,_ she conceded to herself, _he never would have saved me._ Filling her lungs quietly with courage, she stood. At her full height, his bowed head came level with her shoulder, which was still wrapped in her mother's bloodstained coat. She slid it off and laid it on the bed to find her own attire wasn't much better off.

Stepping a little closer, she peeled Gabriel's hands from his wet face and pulled his head and shoulders in against her. Thoughts of her mother danced through her mind as she ran her black, polished nails through his baby-soft hair, and when the gunshot echoed through her memory, she rested her cheek atop his head and shared his grief with tears of her own.

A pair of large, desperate arms encircled her waist and he shook harder. As she held him, she considered what could make his temperament change so quickly and dramatically. She didn't have to think hard.

"When I was a kid," she told him, steadying her voice with a deep breath, "I was good friends with the neighbor's daughter, Jasmine. She had this cat – Renoir, his name was, 'cause the two of them looked just like that painting Renoir did of Manet's niece and her cat."

Gabriel's weeping slowed a little, so she continued as she traced circles with her fingertips against his nape.

"My dad hated him, 'cause he used to come and crap on our lawn all the time," she pictured the white-breasted little furball squatting over the grass with a small chuckle. "Then one day, he found one of his favourite fish on the decking next to the pond – all ripped open and its guts were hanging out, it was gross – and next to it was a big, fat dollop of cat poop."

The angel in her arms was quiet now, save for the deep, shuddering breath he inhaled as she went on.

"He was so angry; he went over there and yelled at Jasmine's parents. When he came back, he shut the front door and said, _I'll feed the damn thing chocolate raisins next time; that'll stop him! _And I was like, five; I had no idea what he was really saying... chocolate raisins were just candy to me, and candy was tasty. So the next time I saw Jasmine – which was a pretty long time, my dad was _furious_ – I told her what he'd said."

Lifting his head from her embrace, he looked up at her, eyes still shining, perplexed and mildly amused at her odd tale. She let one hand fall to her side; the other ran along the silky arc of his wing.

"She was really upset that my dad was angry. She thought if chocolate raisins could stop Renoir from getting in trouble, then it was a great idea. We got some and found him by the pond again; Jasmine was like, _Wow, looks like we found him just in time!_"

Audrey smoothed her fingers down the jet feathers, feeling the long, rigid quills between the satin vanes.

"We fed him the whole packet, and then we went off to play in the house. Later on, when we went looking for Renoir so Jasmine could take him home with her, we found him dead, floating in the water. We both screamed and screamed until Mom and Dad and both of Jasmine's parents came running to see what was wrong. It wasn't until Dad explained that we realised we'd poisoned the poor thing, and he'd obviously fallen in while he wasn't feeling well. I felt so awful, I cried for days. I just hadn't known what I was doing was wrong. I trusted in what I'd heard my dad say."

As she finished her story, she sat down next to him on the bed. His eyes followed her down, no longer bewildered as to the point of this memory she'd decided to share with him.

"What is your name?" His question came in a rasping whisper.

"Audrey."

Gabriel cupped her tear-tracked cheek with his hand in solidarity.

"You're wise for one so young, Audrey."

The irony of his statement brought a smile to her lips, and she looked over at the window. The sun was higher now; _It must be at least ten,_ she thought.

"Where are we?" She returned her attention to Gabriel's pensive, azure eyes, now slightly pink around the edges, but still stunning nonetheless.

"A motel about fifteen miles northeast of... the mountains." He skirted around the vicious first impression he'd irrevocably given her for the time being. "Everyone appears to be gone."

Audrey respected his reluctance to talk about it, and not really too eager to go into much detail right now herself, she opted for a joke instead.

"Plenty of room at the inn then?"

Gabriel smiled widely, his lips parting to reveal a row of white teeth, so pearly she'd easily have believed they were taken from Heaven's own gates. She didn't make a habit of laughing at her own jokes, but she couldn't help but chortle at the absurdity of the circumstances. There she sat, wisecracking about the birth of Jesus with the Messenger of God himself, who seemed to appreciate her humour equally as he laughed alongside her.

Audrey surveyed his captivating eyes once again: bluer than the Caribbean Sea on the clearest summer day; brighter than the burning stars he flew among. They were like tiny, shiny worlds of their own, full of ebbing tides and serene skies. The fine creases that spread from the corners of his eyes were like musical scriptures, upon which the dusting of freckles across his cheekbones were the notes.

Directly below, on his right side, was a scarlet cut. It was fairly shallow, but his grin had stretched it open, dislodging the clot, and a small bead of blood trickled down to his jaw. Audrey raised her hand and mopped it up with the back of her finger, against the grain of his sandpapery cheek.

"Your cut's bleeding."

He looked down at the droplet she'd caught, and her own gaze followed.

"It's but a scratch. It won't take long to heal," Gabriel said dismissively.

"Maybe," Audrey replied, alarm spreading across her face as she caught sight of the much less trivial wound to his stomach, "but that'll take considerably longer."

He pulled the concertinaed fabric apart where Michael's sword had slashed through. She could see he'd already tended to it – it was sewn up with what looked like black cotton, interlocked like a blanket stitch for extra security.

He stood up, his expression impassive as he towered over her, and the light from the window no longer illuminated the hue of his irises, now cold and pale. Audrey's hands inched back over the bedspread of their own accord, ready to swing her lower body over to the other side and catapult her towards the door. Gabriel sensed the abrupt change in her body language immediately and took a step away, lowering his chin, palms up to calm her.

"You still fear me." It wasn't a question. Audrey looked away. "I thought..." He trailed off, either unable or unwilling to finish. She felt another pang of guilt as his brow wrinkled with sadness over her mistrust.

"I can see that you're sorry, I just... I don't know precisely what for. Where's Charlie and Jeep?"

"They left. They thought you were dead."

"And the- the baby?" She asked, debating whether she really wanted to know just how far he'd gone. He seemed _really_ sorry.

"Is fine. Michael... Michael put an end to the Apocalypse, including the hunt for the child."

Audrey didn't understand, but his succinct answers were enough for now. At least she knew it hadn't all been for nothing.

"You don't look like an angel," she vindicated. "You look... like a warrior."

"They're one and the same. I am a warrior of God."

She looked at him uncertainly, but she could see he wasn't so sure of his words himself. He scrutinized the deep grooves that scarred his breastplate, and turned his muscular arms to see the barbed elbow pads strapped to them. Audrey got to her feet.

"Who are you here to fight?" His silence was palpable and telling. "Am I your enemy?"

"No," he answered resolutely. He contemplated the suggestion for a moment, and understood her request. His armour made her anxious.

Reaching up to unbuckle the leather straps holding his breastplate firmly in place, he watched her closely. Her jade eyes traced his movements as he lowered the heavy iron to hang over his belt and tasset, which he unclasped on one side of the sunrise emblem and removed.

Underneath, he wore a leather vest, ruched around the waist and buttoned down the side. As he twisted to undo it, he winced at how his stitches pulled with the shift. Audrey halted him with her hands on his torso. She glanced up before proceeding to unbutton the vest herself. On the side her nimble fingers worked, Gabriel rested his hand on the wall to make it easier for her, but no sooner had he done so, it was hanging open.

With a slight, impressed smile, he released it from the hooks under his pauldrons, slid it over them and laid it with his body armour. Beneath, his primary garment was a black tunic, Audrey noted as she reached for the buckle under his left bicep. Her fingers brushed against his smooth, cool skin and her concentration became significantly more difficult to maintain. Gabriel took the pauldron and set it aside with the rest, and she moved to the other. She was acutely aware of his attention to her now, making her swallow on a dry mouth. After placing the remaining shoulder-plate on the pile, she removed his unforgiving elbow pads, and then held each of his forearms to unbutton the wristguards. As she dropped them to the floor, she noticed his gleaming greaves and bent to one knee to unstrap those, too. They came away to reveal leather boots that encased his trouser-legs midway up his calves, arching slightly at the front around his shins.

Standing, she looked up at a different man. His face was kind and his arms welcoming. _The only thing left is that ugly collar_, she thought.

Audrey stood on tiptoes and raised her hands once more, but Gabriel's large, powerful hands seized her wrists not even halfway up.

"That doesn't come off."


	3. Still Human

**Author's note: **_If you happen to be an impatient sort of person, you might like to know that I've been posting smaller, more regular bits of this over on my blog: hasu-hime. livejournal. com :) __Also, I'd just like to thank everyone for their comments! It's good to know I'm doing something right. This chapter's a little bit heavy towards the end, but rest assured it won't continue so. It just wouldn't be realistic if it steered completely clear of sadness after everything that's happened, you know?_

* * *

Gabriel smoothed his thumbs tenderly over her wrists, knowing he'd startled her. She peered up at him, but he saw no fear as her shoulders relaxed. He couldn't say why he held on, but it wasn't until she nodded in accord that his grip loosened and her hands sank to her sides. She didn't run, or even flinch, and he realised that it wasn't he, himself that disturbed her, but that which he stood for.

He glanced at the bloody pile of metal and leather at his feet. _There was a time when none of this was necessary,_ he thought wearily. _What has become of us?_

A low, rumbling growl interrupted his reverie. He turned to Audrey, who chewed her lip in embarrassment, one hand pressed to her stomach as if it could quieten it and her eyes focused on the floorboards.

"Um... do angels eat?" She asked.

He couldn't help himself. Levity fizzed in his chest as he laughed, particularly at the hopefulness in her voice.

"There's an open suitcase in the room next door," he told her, wiping away the fresh trail of blood his amusement had caused and nodding in the direction of which he spoke, "and a pool outside. Take what you need and bathe; the water will be warm. I'm sure your body must ache." He strode towards the door. "I won't be longer than an hour."

"Wait... is that a yes, then?" Audrey called after him as he rounded the corner and out of sight. He merely chuckled again in response.

Rubbing her empty belly in mild irritation, she wondered what kind of clothes the suitcase might have in it and stepped out into the narrow corridor to investigate.

"While I'm gone –" She gave a shrill squeal of surprise to find Gabriel just inches from her on the left of the door. As she spun in shock to look at him, she lost her balance. A vast, black wing erupted forth and she stumbled into a wall of soft, black feathers. Its owner reached out to pull her upright and held her by the shoulders before him.

"Don't go into the poolhouse," he warned earnestly, then released her and left without another word.

Audrey was rooted to the spot; she suddenly felt very exposed. When God had been the enemy, Michael was there to protect her. When her parents were both gone, Charlie and Jeep had taken her with them. As she lay in the middle of a desert road, dying faster than the darkness, Gabriel had been there to save her. Now she was alone.

She twisted to face the small, grimy window that offered the dim corridor a shaft of daylight to better flaunt its hideous, peeling wallpaper. A small, rectangular swimming pool filled the courtyard below, between the continuation of the main building either side, and what looked like a large shed made of rusty, corrugated iron at the back. The water looked like a swamp; the surface was thick with algae and topped with dead leaves. She dreaded to think what other dead things might be in it. _I am not getting in that,_ she thought tenaciously.

Gabriel was down there now. He approached the edge of the green goop and stooped to one knee. _What is he doing?_ A second later, she fought with her gag reflexes as she found out. He dipped his fingers in, looking up at her, and smiled at her horrified face. Great, green globules of gas began to appear on the surface, popping messily like blisters as they came more frequently, until the centre of the pool bubbled and frothed, lighter and lighter in shade. The white foam oozed across every inch of slime, then died away to reveal crystal clear water. Audrey's eyebrows practically disappeared into her hairline.

"Well shit," she muttered to herself as Gabriel stood and kicked off from the poolside into the air. "Show-off."

After watching him circle and swoop up over the roof above her, she turned to the closed door behind which the suitcase supposedly lay. Her footsteps were muffled by the grubby carpet; _No wonder he snuck up so easily,_ she thought absentmindedly.

With her hand around the brass doorknob, she paused, her heart hammering. She remembered Gabriel's assurance that the battle against Heaven's creepiest bastard emissaries was over, but after all she'd seen in the past two days, she felt pretty justified in her trepidation.

Counting to three, she flung the door open; it hit the wall inside with a thud. It looked exactly the same as the room she'd awoken in, except lived-in. Laughing at her stupidity, she went inside.

_CRASH._ Audrey shrieked and whirled around, her back slamming against the wall. A shattered picture frame lay propped up against the skirting board, surrounded by broken glass. Her over-energetic entrance had obviously knocked it down. Clutching at her chest, she slid down into a crouch.

"Fuck," she breathed.

As she looked around, she could see that it had accommodated a woman. Lacy, colourful undergarments were strewn across the floor; cosmetics littered the dresser-top below the mirror. A gold crucifix necklace hung from the bedpost, along with a dainty charm bracelet: a heart, a butterfly, a padlock, a tiny key and a feather.

She moved forward for a better look, examining each of them in turn. The butterfly was embossed with beautiful, intricate patterns; the lock featured a tiny, lavender gem. When she picked up the heart, she noticed it had a hinge on one side. As she opened the little locket, a scrap of folded paper fell into her lap. Curious, she looked inside. _Forever yours,_ it read, in minute, hand-written letters. Audrey put it back, speculating about who it might have been from.

She got up and paced across to the mirror. A packet of makeup wipes lay among the clutter; peeling back the seal, she took one to clean her face. She was more than a little aghast at the state of it when she looked up: the rain and her tears had created faded black circles around her eyes and dark smudges and streaks intermingled with dried blood, which seemed to have originated from somewhere amongst her mousey-brown hair - it was thoroughly matted into one side. She could feel tight veins of crimson crust down the back of her neck, too, tugging on her skin as she moved.

Erasing the mess, she explored the opposite corner of the room, where the suitcase lay on the floor, lid open, supported by the wall. At first glance, its contents looked like the belongings of a lawyer.

"_Ugh,_" Audrey huffed, rolling her head in exasperation and dropping into a squat. Rifling beneath the top few garments, however, she found a wide array of more casual clothes: a button-down dress, a pair of skinny jeans, t-shirts, tank tops and summery, girly skirts. She glanced around; there was no sign of any worn blouses or pencil skirts about, which made her wonder if the neatly pressed business attire had been a ruse.

She pulled out a pretty, white top and held it up in front of her. It had a smock seam across the chest, above which was lace, with tiny trims around the shoulders for sleeves. It wasn't really her kind of thing, but she'd spotted a pair of dark denim mini-shorts and shrugged to herself as she pulled them out.

At the bottom, she discovered a couple of large towels and various pairs of shoes, only a size bigger than her own. She took an ivory bath sheet and laid her cleansing wipe on the floor as she weighed up her options. _Sandals or boots?_ The sandals were flat and tan in colour, with a string of gold beads down the front, but she figured the size difference might be less noticeable in the brown, leather cowboy ankle-boots and added them to the bundle she held in one arm.

Reaching her arm into one of the zip-pockets in the lid, she found folded underwear and socks. _No way,_ she thought, making a face; _I'd rather go commando._

In the next pocket there were bottles of shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, and, having everything she needed, she made for the door. As she passed over the threshold, though, she hesitated, looking back over her shoulder at the jewellery on the bedpost. Her feet carried her back inside and next she knew, she was peering down at the crucifix resting on her fingertips.

Gabriel's instructions had been clear. _Take what you need._

"I don't need a murderer."

Audrey left the little box room, full of bitterness and poison. Her fiery fury overpowered her consternation about the vacant motel as she came to the end of the corridor and skimmed down the stairs that had led Gabriel outside. They brought her to a wood-panelled room with a desk, presumably reception, small and filthy like everything else she'd encountered thus far. The only window was the frosted one in the wine-red door, which she marched directly for, ignoring the eerie hissing coming from the radio.

She found herself on a narrow path running along the side of the building. Next to the entrance, on the right, stood a tall, iron gate, its black paint blistered and peeling. Beyond, the pool's sparkling waters beckoned.

Dropping her pile on the flagstone floor, which looked cleaner than the plastic loungers surrounding her, she kicked off her shoes. The desert sun warmed her bare shoulders but she scowled as she stood the bottles by the poolside and laid the towel next to them. She wondered where all her own belongings were now; whether the moving van had ever reached the new house in Palm Springs, or if it, too, found itself stranded in the middle of fuck-knows-where, lost and purposeless.

The zipper on her tattered skirt came down easily and she let it fall around her ankles, but the laced front of her corset-like camisole took more patience than she currently had. Fumbling with the knotted ribbon, she only pulled it tighter. In temper – one of Audrey's most reliable traits – she yanked on the straps and snapped them like strips of paper. It took a fair bit of wriggling, but she finally got the rigid top up over her head and hurled it across the courtyard, panting.

The offending article hit the poolhouse above the door and disappeared behind where it stood ajar. She stared, unseeing, as angry tears welled in her stinging eyes. Letting them come, unchecked, she removed the remainder of her clothing and eased herself into the warm water, contemplating absently how long angel parlour tricks lasted.

It was so quiet; over the years, she'd garnered a forbearance for ambient noise, her parents' quarrels being so frequent and raucous. Her mother had been a proud creature, her father less serious and totally unconcerned with the opinions of others. She recalled his question about her outfit in the diner and laughed through her heartache as she lathered the clumps of blood in her hair with shampoo. She'd known it wasn't his discrepancy; he'd made that clear by saying her _mother_ wanted to know. If it had, she'd have been upset.

Her dad had always been resigned to let her be herself, knowing that she'd work it out in the end, and she loved him for it. To make her own mistakes was to learn, firsthand, the importance of sense and sensibility. She valued the freedom of self-discovery highly; he'd taught her to, because blind reliance on others got you nowhere.

Salty droplets rolled down her heat-flushed face and splashed into the water below, sending ripples gliding among the floating suds around her shoulders. She closed her eyes as a cool, soothing breeze swept by and the scent of macadamia and aloe filled her nose. Drawing a deep breath, Audrey leaned back, letting her hair fan out around her under the swaying surface, and her body float to the top, buoyed by the air continuously expanding and deflating her lungs.


	4. Opportunists

The motel became a game piece on a Monopoly board as Gabriel ascended – faster and easier than usual, he found, without his armour to weigh him down. Bearing Northwest, he headed back towards the diner. From his incredible height, he could see it on the horizon already, marked by a column of billowing, black smoke, like a ladder to Heaven made from his very own plumage.

He followed the road he'd taken the night before, while Audrey had slept soundly in his arms, despite the relentless rain and the deafening cleaves of light that had struck all around them. He'd known her exhaustion would engulf her quickly, but he hadn't expected her to be so quiet. After all she'd endured, to the brink of death and back again, she had simply clung to his breastplate and stared up in silence at her would-be protector. Vermilion blood had seeped down the drenched locks that stuck to her face like the cursed waters of the Nile, and the flashes of lightning lit her enchanting, aquamarine eyes like jewels.

She'd been a little more cautious when she awoke, but once the terrified, residual haze of her nightmare had faded, he'd felt the inexplicable trust she'd invested in him, and it felt like salvation. Somehow, even in the wake of the Apocalypse he'd led in the name of God, and though he'd been the physical cause of what would have been her end had he not intervened, she'd still graciously held him and offered consoling words when his faith in himself, and therefore the Lord, had begun to waver.

As he approached the noxious pillar of fumes, he gathered a light layer of white ash on his contrasting, cotton tunic. It hovered throughout the sooty air, glowing orange until it cooled into delicate flakes of dust. The fire appeared to have receded, he saw as he swept down through the dark veil shrouding the rubble, leaving only a few piles of debris still aflame.

Folding his wings, he dropped the last couple of yards to the arid ground and found himself at the centre of a mass grave. Hordes of charred bodies lay in broken piles surrounding the ruin of Paradise Falls, where they'd been deposited by the force of the explosion. The stench of burnt flesh was unimaginable and Gabriel absorbed the devastation he'd been bid to wreak. Fragment after fragment of terrible human history tugged at his memory as he looked out over the sea of carcasses, awash with guilt. Everything he ever thought he knew lay with them.

He could not call them innocent – since their creation, mankind had attained but a fleeting spell of innocence, only to be corrupted from within – but this was far from a reasonable punishment. Every one of them had the potential to learn the virtues of integrity and kindness, given the right guidance. Michael had recognised that, while Gabriel had deliberately blocked out the ethical quandary in his need to earn the Lord's favour. Now, of all the lives he'd rewritten, only one had been salvaged.

He bent his knees and took off again, in search of food for his hungry, compassionate new friend. It was a long time before he found any, even with the advantage of flight. About fifty miles west, green fields began to appear below, indicating a settlement area nearby. Diving low among the crops, he tried to ignore a flock of vultures and the meal they left behind as they fled. He plucked an armful of corn, and some tomatoes from a vine outside a small farmhouse.

The garden had been carefully looked after. It was surrounded by a dry stone wall, and was filled with desert verbena and hopsage, which seemed all the more colourful against the desolate landscape beyond the fields. Small patches of fruit and vegetables bore ripe produce, some of which had already been pecked away at by the birds in the short time since their cultivator's demise.

Along the length of the path that ran between the house and the gap in the wall that led out to the cornfield, a washing line hung overhead. Frilly nightgowns, jeans, cardigans and long johns adorned it, fluttering slightly in the breeze. On a stool next to the open back door, below a melodic wind chime in the shade of a pomegranate tree, sat an empty wicker basket and a fabric pouch on a coat-hanger, full of wooden pegs. Gabriel placed the corn and tomatoes in the basket and added a few pomegranates from the tree, before ducking in through the little, rustic door, finding himself in the kitchen.

White wood cabinets and granite countertops surrounded the far right corner of the room, stretching all the way across to the refrigerator, which stood next to an archway through to the next room on the left. An assortment of pans and utensils dangled from a rack over the large island in the middle of the room, where a pile of festering tomatoes lay on a chopping board beside a half-eaten loaf of tiger bread enclosed in a polythene bag. Gabriel found it odd that there was no sign of a knife anywhere, despite the incidental state of the room.

He investigated the contents of the useless, tepid fridge, finding jars of homemade jam, a couple of aubergines that were still fairly firm, a selection of furry vegetables, a block of wrapped cheese that didn't look mouldy but had a vaguely pungent odour, and a small tub of butter. He took the jam, aubergines and butter, and laid them on the island with the bread while he inspected the freezer below. A carton of rancid, melted ice-cream greeted him, making his head jerk back in disgust, and he suddenly decided, ramming the drawer shut, that he had enough to last them until morning. He picked up his findings and stashed them in the basket outside with the rest.

As he packed the food in securely, a strange shuffling noise reached his ears. Straightening up, he listened: there were no birds calling, nor leaves rustling, and the wind chimes were completely still. The shuffling stopped, and a low, ancient, instantly recognisable laugh rang out from behind. He knew exactly who stood there, regardless of the fragile form he took, and in one concise, fluid movement he spread his lethal wings and spun, slicing through the old woman's neck like a blade through water. It was a clean cut; there was no mess until her frail body hit the ground, a kitchen knife grasped in her withered, immobile fingers, and the severed head rolled to the foot of the tree. The silvery lengths of her hair drifted, in their own sweet time, to join them.

Gabriel looked up, and everything still rooted in the earth was dead. The vegetables were black with rot; the corn was brown and dry, and the flowers had all wilted. _I knew this would happen,_ he thought sagely.

Picking up the basket, he set off for the motel in haste. Possession, he knew, was a fatiguing exploit, but after such a short stint it would only be half an hour, perhaps, if that, before he would be able to reanimate another poor, departed soul's shell. He needed to get back to Audrey before his fallen brother found her.

The terrain below was a blur of Joshua trees, arms outstretched to the sky as Gabriel darted across it, straight as an arrow. _Please,_ he prayed; _protect her. I beg you._

He chided himself for leaving her alone; he'd taken precautions, but it had still been an immensely imprudent risk. She was just barely recovered from the last time she'd come to harm because of him, and now he'd endangered her again. If anything happened to her...

He shook the thought determinedly from his mind and raced on, breathless from his anxious exertion. With the almighty strength of his wings and a fervent sense of urgency, the journey back took half as long. The gleaming blue waves of the pool in the courtyard soon came into view, surrounded by white dots which he knew to be loungers. There was no sign of her.

As he descended, however, he saw that one of the dots had legs, and long, brown hair spread out over the flagstones. She lay on the ground next to the water, and upon realising this, Gabriel's heart stopped cold.


	5. Promises

In his flurry of solicitude, Gabriel almost landed in the water. His attention was solely focused on Audrey's inert form, curled up on the poolside with her back to him. As he righted himself before he plunged into its depths, she stirred. The beating of his wings and the clatter of the basket as he dropped it to the ground had broken the oppressive silence she'd been hiding from with memories of her parents. He alighted forthwith into a crouch before her and a pair of glassy, reddened eyes met his. When he reached out to touch her face, her cheek was cool from the stone she lay upon but her rosy lips were unmistakeably flushed with life. She was unharmed.

With a profound sigh of relief he let his frantic heartbeat steady itself as he pulled her into his arms. Bewildered, but grateful for his soothing embrace, Audrey wrapped her arms about his middle and tucked her head under his chin. The warmth he radiated was so much friendlier than the sun's harsh, midday rays.

"Your heart's racing," she pointed out, listening closely even as it slowed beneath her ear. "What's wrong?"

"I thought..." Gabriel started, but shook his head almost indiscernibly. "I worried for you. I shouldn't have left you alone."

Audrey didn't question him further. His every word was a riddle to her, and she suspected a lot of it made no real sense anyway. At least, none that she could ever hope to understand. Instead, she stroked the contours of his back, up between his wings where the muscles flexed as he surrounded them with his impervious feathers.

"I'm alright," she promised.

Gabriel lifted her wet hair from the damp patch it was creating on the back of her clean, white top and laid it over his arm. She was safe. Lucifer couldn't touch her now she'd bathed in holy water, and neither could he trick her as long as Gabriel was there to prevent it.

Remembering the basket, which lay on its side a few feet away, though still contained all but an escaped pomegranate, he pulled back to look at her.

"Do you like corn?" He asked hopefully.

Audrey smiled up at him, stabilising herself by hooking her hands over the soft crooks of his elbows.

"I love corn," she answered, somewhat amused by his benign question.

Upon hearing this, he set her aside and got to his feet.

"Firewood..." he thought aloud. He hadn't considered how they'd cook it. He pulled Audrey up from the ground by the hands, turned his back to her and knelt down again. "Put your arms around my neck."

Audrey hovered, not liking where this was going at all. She wasn't particularly afraid of heights, but it was easier to deal with when her support was stationary. Imagining the ground zip by below her with nothing fixing her to Gabriel but her own arms had her feeling decidedly nauseous.

He twisted to glance over his shoulder at her, and captured her hand in his.

"We won't go far. I saw a tree that must have collapsed in the storm not a mile up the road." Still, her hesitation lingered. He gave her fingers a little squeeze in reassurance. "I'll stay low. I won't let you fall; I swear it on God's name."

"That's a pretty serious promise," Audrey affirmed, a smile tugging at her coral pink lips.

"Is a promise not, by definition, something one is extremely serious about?"

He said it with such sincerity that she found herself stepping forward, won over. Nestling between his wings, she reached right around his neck with both arms, securing her grasp nervously on his collar. His herculean arms locked her thighs to his sides as he stood and unfolded his wings, preparing for flight.

"Hold on ti-_ight_," Gabriel bid, his last word cut off by her constricting grip. He stretched an arm up, chuckling, to loosen her grasp a little. "That's the second time you've tried to throttle me," he teased; "To strangle an angel to death would be a damnable offense, you know."

Audrey opened her mouth to respond but he leapt into the air before anything coherent could come out. Clinging to him for dear life, she shut her eyes tight and rested her mouth on the ridge between his ear and jaw. As his wings crested with each beat, they cradled her against his back, and she felt the resolute fulfilment of his promise in every move he made. Her hair streamed behind her like a flag, drying quickly in the breeze that caressed her bare arms and legs. Weightlessness commanded her senses as they soared, empowering her to look down. Gabriel felt her lips stretch into a smile against his skin, and couldn't help but grin with her.

They were only as high as the tallest trees; branches flew by them, tipped with bunches of green, spiny leaves. Across the road up ahead lay the one Gabriel had mentioned, having had its narrow, slightly top-heavy trunk snapped in the wind. He lowered their course as they approached it and settled smoothly into a walk, tucking his wings away behind him once more. Audrey lifted her head and placed her hands atop his shoulders.

Bending his knees so the drop was shorter, he relinquished her legs and she slid down to her feet. He turned to find her smirking, seemingly a little chagrined.

"Don't even dare say I told you so," she advised.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

They laughed together as they got closer to the fallen tree. Gabriel stooped to fish a small knife out of the side of his right boot and wasted no time in selecting a branch to dissect. The tiny blade sliced through the wood as if it were cucumber, and Audrey's lips formed a perfect, gaping 'O'.

"What kind of metal is that?" She crouched beside him as he worked, watching again, how the knife sank effortlessly into the solid branch.

"It's made of an element the Earth has yet to produce naturally."

She held out her arms in absent amazement as he passed her the logs he severed. When they'd gathered a bundle, he replaced the blade within the metal sheath built into his boot and went to take the wood from her.

"No, no;" Audrey pulled the pile out of his reach. "I'll hold onto these. You hold onto _me_."

With one arm around the logs and the other around Gabriel's neck, Audrey was raised above the treetops once more. She kept her eyes open this time, watching as the ground fell away. As they neared the motel, they swept higher to clear the boundaries of the courtyard, then circled down onto the sunlit paving.

Gabriel stepped up onto the veranda of one of the rooms by the poolside and picked up a small, slatted iron table while Audrey watched in confusion. He set it down next to her and took the firewood from her arms to place it between the four curved legs. Shifting as if bracing himself for something, he rested his hand over the logs.

"What are you doing?" Audrey asked, utterly perplexed, but Gabriel didn't reply. He knelt there, waiting, until suddenly he whipped his hand away, just a fraction of a second before the wood burst into flames. Dumbfounded, Audrey propped her hands on the back of her hips.

"Quite the not-so-little miracle-worker, aren't you?"

"It's merely a case of knowing how to manipulate matter," he shrugged, rising. Audrey stared at him like a toddler in an Advanced Biophysics class. "Come now," he grinned, "humanity has advanced enough to know by now that there's no such thing as magic."

"I have to beg to differ," she replied, smiling to herself as she went about rummaging in the basket.

From the selection of food he'd brought back, she picked out the five corn cobs and sat cross-legged on the flagstones, pulling the leaves apart and rolling away the silky strings inside. Gabriel joined her and pulled one of the ears from her lap.

"So what happens now?" Audrey asked as they prepared the corn for grilling. As blissfully distracting from the pain of her situation as he was, they couldn't camp out in the back yard of an abandoned motel forever. She had so many questions, but she just didn't know how to ask them. They all sounded so ridiculous in her head.

If someone had told her a week ago that she'd be dining with a real, living angel – an Archangel, to boot – on a makeshift meal of maize and bread, she'd have asked if she could have some of whatever they were on. The things she'd seen in the past couple of days may not only have changed _her_ life irrevocably, there was a possibility they'd changed the world.

"I don't know," Gabriel answered. "What happened when you found Renoir?"

Audrey couldn't look at him. The fistfuls of string she held felt like cotton wool as she watched them roll between her fingers. _She never forgave me,_ she thought. _That was the last time we spoke._

"We volunteered at a rescue shelter, with all kinds of different animals. So we could... you know, learn more about them, and how to take care of them, so it'd never happen again."

She wanted him to stay; this much she knew for certain. He was the only friend she had left now. She didn't even want to begin to contemplate what she'd do when he, inevitably, returned to Heaven.

"What a beautiful lie." Gabriel stilled his fingers a moment, before reaching across the short distance between them and enclosing her hand in his, stopping her preparatory efforts too. She looked up at him now, terrified of what he might say next. "I'm not going to leave you, Audrey."

"You don't have to go back to Heaven?"

"The Lord led me to you for a reason," he told her, "and until that purpose is served, I'm going nowhere."

Audrey felt as though she were back in the air, sailing on nothing but sanctity.

"Promise?" It sounded childish even to her own ears, but it was all she could do not to beg and cry hysterically.

"I swear it on God's name," he pledged.

Knowing that to Gabriel, the name of the Lord was the most sacred thing that existed, she heedlessly let the leafy parcels in her lap roll onto the stone as she kneeled to hug him in speechless gratitude. He held her as she had done for him that morning, stroking her hair with the utmost tenderness.

He knew it was what she'd needed to hear, because _she_ knew he wouldn't take such a promise lightly. It didn't take an omniscient God to see she was alone in the world, and far more lamentably, alone in her heart. There was a bitter derision in the way she spoke of miracles, and he'd seen the mockery in her eyes when he'd first told her she had nothing to fear. She held no love for her creator, nor His outwardly fickle, unjust ways.

As he scooped her glossy, fawn hair back over her ear, he wondered if that was his mysterious objective: to restore her faith in God, as Michael had restored the Lord's faith in humankind. It seemed fitting, that since Gabriel had failed to recognise His true needs, he should be tasked with polishing the more difficult side of the coin.

_She's right,_ he thought, resting his nose on the slightly off-centre parting of her hair and breathing in the scent of macadamia; _if we're to prevent history from repeating itself, we must understand why it happened in the first place._

He reached for an ear of corn, his path chosen and his love unconditional for the sweet, audacious girl he cradled in his arms.


	6. Cheats & Chances

After three hours of foraging, gathering wood, fire-tending, preparation and cooking, Gabriel and Audrey finally got their brunch around one o'clock, when the sun had reached its peak and began its descent to darkness once again. The fire crackled on below the table as they sat side by side, overlooking the pool while they ate.

Audrey sank her teeth into her second cob, butter dribbling down her chin. Wiping it away with the back of her hand, she looked over at her companion, who was in an even messier state than herself: a little string of creamy, yellow globules clung to the front of his black tunic. He'd been compulsively licking his pillow-soft lips, she'd observed, thoroughly entertained, as he tried to eat corn on the cob with any minute shred of decorum he could muster. Not that she'd been looking at his lips, specifically... it merely amused her to see the self-conscious way he tried to consume finger-food politely.

She watched his tongue emerge again and sweep unconsciously around the corner of his mouth, and it wasn't until he caught her looking that she realised she'd stopped chewing. Quickly, she disguised her gawping with a smile and bit into her corn again.

"What?" Gabriel asked.

_Damn it!_

"You—you have butter down your front," she remembered, desperately trying, and failing, to hide her smirk.

He looked down at the greasy trail on his chest and scraped it up with his thumbnail, with what appeared to be a light blush spreading across his cheeks. Audrey laughed, reaching out to give his wrist a little, affectionate squeeze.

"Are you always so stiff and proper?" She chortled as she raised her cob to her lips once more. He turned his attention to her, but said nothing. "Let's play a game. Whoever can finish their corn without licking their lips, wins."

Gabriel smiled at her ridiculous notion, already contemplating ways to suppress the instinct.

"What's the prize?"

Audrey considered it; she had nothing to give.

"I don't know. What would you like?"

"How about a truthful answer to a question of my choice?" Gabriel proposed.

Her brow furrowed slightly in uncertainty. She had lots of secrets – plenty to hide, especially from an angel. _What could he possibly want to know about me so badly?_ She wondered, but almost instantly, she found that she didn't care. There was nothing she felt she needed to conceal from him, humiliating or not.

"Deal," she agreed.

"And if you win?"

She thought for a moment, reluctant to waste her prize on one of the many questions she had for him, because he'd probably answer truthfully anyway. He _was_ an angel, after all.

"I'll get back to you on that," Audrey deflected, struggling immensely to keep her eyes above his nose. She knew precisely what she wanted, she just had no idea how he'd react. He was the single most expressive yet unpredictable person she'd ever met.

She raised her corn and took a bite, leaning forward so that the butter wouldn't drip on her clean clothes. As she chewed, lips glistening with butter, Gabriel bit into his own. She watched vigilantly, grinning as a droplet rolled down his chin. He stared back at her, his face a portrait of innocence, and wiped it away with the heel of his hand. Audrey couldn't believe it.

"Did you not understand the rules of the game?"

"You said without _licking_ our lips," he retorted smugly. "You mentioned nothing of _wiping_ them."

Audrey gaped in outrage. _The nerve!_

"You cheater!" She laughed, punching his arm playfully as she knelt to further attack his shameless defiance. "You knew exactly what I meant! Don't even try to pretend you didn't!"

Gabriel was thrown backward, roaring with laughter as he raised his arms in defence.

"You're an _angel!_" Audrey exclaimed indignantly, batting at any part of him she could reach. "You're not supposed to _cheat!_"

"Let's call it a draw, shall we?" He offered, still chuckling as he caught her wrists with ease in his large, warm hands.

"_Draw!_" She gasped in hilarity. "I was thinking more along the lines of forfeit, on your part!"

As her wriggling subsided along with their laughter, he allowed her wrists to slide out of his grasp, and she leaned her hands either side of his head, looming over him. His victorious grin lingered, drawing her attention back to his butter-glazed lips.

"Fine," Audrey conceded. "Then I'll take my prize now."

She picked up her hands from the floor and skimmed her fingertips over his eyes to close them, before bringing them to rest on his joy-flushed cheeks. Barely giving him a second to realise what was happening, she captured his lips in a sweet, chaste kiss.

Gabriel's senses shut down to the world around them, having been taken wholly by surprise. The afternoon sun beat down on them, but he didn't feel it. The fire crackled as the flames slowly expended the firewood, but he didn't hear it. All that existed in that moment were the wispy strands of her hair that brushed against his jaw, the feather-soft fingertips that caressed his cheeks and the delicacy of the way her velvet lips grazed against his own.

He'd been kissed once before – a long time ago, when a girl had begged him to cure her of her ailments, and sexual pleasure had been the only currency women had to offer – but it had been an entirely distasteful experience. This, however, was another matter altogether. She touched him with such reverence, igniting the first stirrings of something he'd never felt in all his four billion years, and it completely disarmed him.

He was just raising his hands to participate a little more when it was all over. Audrey was pulling away, leaving him feeling far more cheated than he thought justified for his minor deception. He opened his eyes to find her still very close, her luminous, turquoise eyes fixed upon him.

"What was your question?" She asked, almost whispering.

He blinked through his astonishment, not really hearing the words coming from her incarnadine lips.

"Sorry?"

"Your prize," she clarified, sitting up beside him. Careful not to pull his stitches, Gabriel pushed himself up too, not yet willing to let their proximity go. "What did you want to ask me?"

Returning to his normal self, he remembered the deal they'd agreed upon.

"If I hadn't rescued you last night, and you'd died, do you believe you would have gone to Heaven?"

"No," she answered, truthfully as promised, looking down at the corn laying, forgotten, by her feet.

"Would—"

"Ah-ah!" Audrey grinned, cutting him off with a forefinger to his lips. "One kiss, one question. You're such a cheater! Does God know how dishonest you really are?"

He laughed, but even as he did so, something occurred to her: all the heinous sins she'd committed, and here she was, corrupting something as spiritually pure as an Archangel. _Was that what he was getting at?_ She suddenly felt horrifically cheap and dirty. Gabriel noticed the disappearance of her smile immediately.

"What's wrong?"

"You... I—I'm, I mean, that kiss wasn't... I wasn't trying to, like—" She stammered, trying to find some kind of steady foundation to voice her intentions – or lack thereof.

He caught on, reaching forward to clutch her shoulders.

"No, no," he cut across her. "That's not what I was trying to say." He traced the angle of her shoulders up to her neck, where his thumbs stroked her jawline beneath her hair. "What I was going to ask next was, would you think me presumptuous if I were to tell you that the pool is full of holy water?" _Please,_ he thought, _please don't be offended._ "You began a clean slate today, so to speak."

As if magnetised, Audrey's eyes flitted across to the pool. _Holy water?_ She recalled how he'd dangled his fingers in the revolting, green goop, and realised he'd granted her forgiveness for every wrongdoing she'd ever perpetrated. Relief flooded through her like a tsunami, followed by an equally powerful wave of adoration for he whom she'd considered a monster, not five hours ago. She could no longer think straight, and the smile that spread across her face was the only indication Gabriel had that her tears were those of happiness.

Mirroring her relief, Gabriel wrapped his arms around her. How attached he'd gotten to this girl, in the mere space of a day. How much she'd taught him already – not least of all, that kissing wasn't nearly as repugnant an activity as he'd previously believed.

He thought about the stuttering worry she never quite got out. Feeling the inexplicable need to put it to rest, he laid his cheek atop her head as he spoke again.

"Understand, you've done nothing to tarnish this new start. The stories of the Grigori – the angels who were cast out of Heaven for intimacy with human women – they're only half-truths, as with most Biblical tales. The Grigori were exiled for _raping_ human women, which God could not forgive."

The sun was getting fairly low over the mountains now, streaking the sky with pink and gold. The colours bounced around under the pool-water and glinted off the edge of the metal poolhouse.

Gabriel's head snapped up. _It's open,_ he realised, watching it like a cat crouched before a bathing bird. Sensing his sudden tenseness, Audrey looked up at him.

"Did you go in the poolhouse?" He asked her, already knowing the answer.

"No," she replied, twisting in his arms to look at it. The door stood ajar; her camisole was just visible behind it on the ground. "I swear, I never—"

"I believe you," he murmured.

"It – It might have come loose when... I got a little frustrated with my top and kind of threw it over there," she confessed.

"No. The door was locked." He got to his feet and touched the crown of her sun-soaked hair, his eyes never straying from the poolhouse. "Stay here."

Leaving her sitting by the fire, which was the only sound besides the cry of a red-tail hawk overhead, he moved towards the door. _Why didn't I think to check?_ He censured himself. _He could be anywhere by now._

He nudged Audrey's camisole aside with his foot as he stepped inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were no windows in the gloomy shed, and it was decorated only with cobwebs and dead spiders.

Recognising the vacant spot which had not been so before, he returned to Audrey's side, trying to keep his strides regular. _There's no use in scaring her unnecessarily,_ he decided.

"Come," he bid, "let's go inside."

He helped her up with an easy tug on her hands and pulled her in close to his side, marching her straight towards the gate. Audrey let herself be shepherded across the courtyard, confused, but trusting Gabriel steadfastly.

"What's going on?" She wanted to know as they rounded the corner and entered the tiny reception area behind the burgundy door.

He didn't answer, however, because they were greeted by an odd hissing noise. His arm instinctively tightened around her waist, which unnerved her further.

"Did you switch the radio on, Audrey?"

She shook her head as he'd rightly predicted.

"Wait..." she whispered through the deathly silence. "It was on when I came down to bathe. I didn't think anything of it. Is the power back on?" She went to take a step towards the lightswitch, but his other arm came around her front to halt her.

"No, look," he pointed out. "The switch is down; it's on, but there's no light."

Audrey frowned in perplexity, unable to understand how the radio could be working without power.

"But how, if... _batteries;_" Audrey cottoned on, anxious now. "Someone's been in here." Her hand found its way unconsciously to her mouth. "Shit, Gabriel – someone was here while I was _alone!_"

_And thankfully, he's only playing games,_ he thought to himself. This had merely been intended to frighten Audrey while he was away, except he hadn't bargained on her obliviousness; Gabriel would have laughed, were it not for the sobering revelation that Lucifer was not after him, but the young, warm-hearted girl by his side. _So that's why he was laughing,_ he inferred.

"Shhh," he soothed her, running his hand over the back of her hair as he kept his eyes on the staircase. "Calm yourself. He can't touch you; the water cleansed you of any potential leverage he may have had over you."

"He? You know who it is?"

"It is my brother," Gabriel answered quietly.

"Another angel?" She relaxed slightly at the idea, only to have it replaced with the terrifying truth.

"He was once, yes. His name is Lucifer." Audrey's fingers grasped fistfuls of his tunic as she reeled in disbelief.

"That's... You mean, th–the _Devil?_"

"That depends on whether you consider Satan and the 'Devil' to be one and the same."

Her mind was too fraught to even begin to decipher the meaning in his words as he led her towards the stairs. The landing at the top was illuminated by the dying sun, making the lurid wallpaper almost neon as they approached the door behind which Gabriel had watched over her as she'd slept, the night before.

He feared no attack now, in light of the knowledge that Lucifer's little escapade at the motel had taken place before he'd encountered him at the farmhouse. He only worried for Audrey as he opened the door, without a shadow of a doubt what he'd find.


	7. Sanctuary

Audrey's scream pierced Gabriel's ears and heart when her eyes fell upon the rotting corpse inside. As he turned her around to face him she dissolved into overwrought tears.

The man, whom he'd found slumped over the desk downstairs early that morning when they'd arrived, and locked away in the poolhouse to keep Audrey safe and calm, looked to have been in his mid to late fifties. Frozen by rigor mortis, he'd been propped up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, wearing Gabriel's discarded armour and a wide-eyed, leering grin. One half of his grey-stubbled face was dark purple, where his blood had pooled and congealed in his veins when he'd died; the other side was covered in dried blood that had seeped from the head wound responsible for his demise.

Gabriel bent and scooped Audrey up diagonally across his broad chest, then turned and made his way back outside. She reached her arms up around his neck as he spread his wings and took flight, leaving his armour behind. He didn't need it; come hell or high water, he needed nothing more than his body and his God to protect her from his brother.

He wondered what Lucifer could possibly want with the girl as he veered west, to escape the desert altogether. He knew there'd be far more survivors among the cities, meaning damage would be better dealt with, making them less vulnerable and harder to find.

As the sun began its final golden soliloquy up ahead, disappearing behind the horizon, Gabriel cradled Audrey closer. Her bare arms and legs were freezing in the high altitude and the rapidly waning light. Though her tears abated, he could feel her damp eyelashes flicker against his jaw, perpetually alert, and all the while her fingertips ran circles through the short, soft hair at his nape, seemingly as soothing to her as it was to him. His eyelids felt heavier the further they went; he hadn't slept in over forty-eight hours and his body ached in protest.

They'd gone some seventy miles before signs of civilisation began to appear. Grids full of dots and stretches of green crept into view, and Gabriel began their descent. They passed over a main road jammed with stationary vehicles, some still containing their late drivers, but Audrey's eyes reflected only the star-strewn expanse of indigo above.

A golf course clubhouse with stucco walls and terracotta coloured roof tiles was boarded up at the windows and door, while its fairways grew untended outside. The sidewalks beyond were littered with glass, where people had broken shop windows in the panic to gather supplies in preparation for whatever was to come next. Here and there, bodies had been left where they'd dropped, but they were casualties of chaos rather than God's wrath, he knew, because they still looked relatively fresh.

Looking out over the city, he saw it was set into the now shadowy canyon that tapered to a close at the far end, and at the back, in the very corner, stood a small cathedral. It was a narrow building, being restricted as it was by the rock, but its spires towered almost as high as the gorge itself. The front was adorned with a grand, circular stained-glass window, above a set of three tall, pointed arches, the one in the centre sheltering the enormous, wooden door.

Sadness weighed on Gabriel's heart as he alighted and walked the remainder of the long, palm-lined path leading up to it. _How materialistic it's all become,_ he thought with disappointment.

Audrey watched the avenue shrink away over his shoulder until the darkness of the doorway drew over her. He set her down beside him, before the ornate, iron windows in the wood, shuttered on the inside, and beat his fist thrice against the door. It was flanked by sculptures in the stone wall, of deferential saints with devout hands, intricate halos and humble smiles.

As they waited in the twilit archway, Audrey leaned nearer to him, nervous and shivering slightly in the cooling desert air. She wasn't sure whether she was desperate to get inside or to turn tail and run, but Gabriel's wing wrapped around her like a warm blanket and his hand enclosed around hers, making it difficult to be afraid of anything.

One of the shutters creaked open a fraction of an inch, revealing a dull, green eye surrounded by wrinkles. It squinted at first in suspicion, surveying their faces with caution, before it fixed upon the black, feathery embrace Audrey was held in, and widened.

"We seek shelter," Gabriel asserted, at which the eye blinked in response.

"Lotta weird stuff been going on around here," came a gruff but gentle voice. "Don't s'pose you'd mind showing me your teeth?"

Audrey grimaced in compliance, while Gabriel merely stared back. With a little persuasion from a squeeze of his fingers, however, he showed off his dazzling smile. The old man seemed satisfied with their credentials, and his eye disappeared while the sounds of bolts and barricades echoed from behind the door.

The window was a little higher than Audrey's eye level, but through it Gabriel could see an entrance hall, glowing orange in the flickering candlelight. The heavy, wooden doors swung open, revealing the full picture, and they were welcomed by the loud click of cocked guns.

On one side of the old priest stood a young, uniformed sheriff with an innately friendly face that looked out of place behind his firearm; on the other, a beautiful, caramel-skinned woman who didn't look particularly in the mood for taking prisoners. Both appeared unperturbed by the ostensibly impossible sight before them as they stared the newcomers down.

Tension solidified between them but Audrey felt only a fleeting brush of panic before the dark archway flooded with a blinding tranquillity so bright and powerful that her knees buckled beneath her, and she fell, breathless, to the concrete steps.

"Lay down your weapons," Gabriel commanded them; "We mean you no harm."

Her fingers still entwined with his, Audrey received the full force of his blissful subjugation, while the others simply let their guns clatter to the floor, glittering tears of awe gathering in their wide eyes. The priest's timeworn hands clasped over his heart, where the gold cross hung from his rosary.

As the euphoria faded, Audrey remembered where she'd seen this before: vivid images of an unearthly, white light gleaming through a doorway swam to the front of her mind. A gasp; the crack of a gunshot; the trickle of ruby-red blood from her mother's forehead as she collapsed.

She pulled her hand from Gabriel's and wrapped her arms around herself, doubled over at his feet. Agonizing enlightenment swallowed her up whole; it made sense to her now. She'd been so, incomprehensibly angry at Michael for pulling that trigger. She'd thought there must have been another way – that he could have pulled her out of the way with his far greater strength, or talked her down, even in that last second before their doom arrived – but she understood now: she'd already been prepared to hand the baby over, and with the addition of Gabriel's divine influence there'd have been no stopping her. He did what he had to do.

Gabriel turned his attention to Audrey, who sat weeping in the spill of warm light from the doorway. Crouching in confusion beside her, he placed a concerned hand on her back. This had never happened before; the technique was supposed to elate, not crush.

"Audrey?" He tugged gently on her shoulder, encouraging her to sit up, but she could barely draw breath between sobs. "What's wrong?"

He'd seen some experience a lull of drowsiness after an Apparition, their bodies overwhelmed by the serene sensation, but never a wave of sorrow such as that which currently reigned over Audrey.

"_Mom,_" she managed to convey; "_My mom._"

He thought back to his entrance to the diner – the last occasion on which he'd used his gift – and recalled the lifeless heap of a woman he'd stepped over, having heard the gunshot from outside. The pieces fell into place and his heart ached for her. _She's been through so much,_ he thought_; lost so much. How can I ever hope to make this right?_

He lifted her curled-up form into his arms and stood, turning towards the open door, where the priest and his previously armed guards moved aside as he approached. His footsteps echoed quietly against the marble-tiled floor, which led him under a magnificent arch and into the majestic main hall. The ceiling towered in gothic vaults above, sprawling from the peaks of the pillars bordering the nave. People huddled in timid clusters among the pews; some were laid out across them, injured and covered by blankets. Their symphony of whispers grew into a cacophonous hiss that bounced around the vast atrium as he ascended the steps to the chancel, continued past the empty choir stalls and set Audrey down on the altar.

He felt so useless; this was the one kind of wound he could not mend for her. What was done was done, and time was a constant, irreversible flow of interlinking, overlapping, riotously proliferating events that even God Himself had no control over. It was the foundation upon which life bloomed and death recycled.

In his idle redundancy, Gabriel took her head in his hands, oblivious to their spectators, and tilted her chin up as he bent to meet her lips. It was the only thing he'd ever experienced that had the power to make one forget even that which seemed critically important only moments ago. He imitated the sweetness and gentility she'd shown him, hoping desperately that it would ease her pain, if only for as long as he held her there.

Audrey's mind was a labyrinth even she could make neither head nor tail of, full of blazing, phosphorescent meanders and bottomless pits of darkness that threatened to drown her in their vacuous depths. An instinctive need to try to fix the gaping holes in her heart surmounted her latent logic and her fingertips climbed his cheeks, before smoothing over the recesses of his temples and following the fluffy fringe of hair that skimmed the tops of his ears. She let her tongue glide over the arc of his upper lip and felt the warmth of his tremulous breath as his reservation crumbled under her touch.

Somewhere behind that dogmatic masquerade, she knew, was a vibrant creature not unlike herself, though in many ways he was still very much a child, yet to learn right from wrong, having never been given the opportunity to make mistakes. He possessed the same congenital sense of morality as she, he'd just never dared to question authority as she had, and had it not been for her flagrantly disobedient ways, she'd have turned out just as weak-willed as her nevertheless beloved mother.

She kissed his lips once more, and retreated, despite her racing heart, to look at him. Keeping his face securely in her hands, she wondered how God had dreamed up such a shade of blue, when even the clearest summer sky couldn't compare.

"You've been so kind to me," she whispered, her thoughts disjointed and her eyes tired in the wake of her torrent of tears.

"And yet I still feel I have not paid my penance," he replied, pushing her hair back over her shoulder.

Audrey's forehead creased with sympathy for the repentant angel who had brought devastation upon the world. She could see he felt he had everything to answer for, but in her eyes, it wasn't he who was the sinner. She leaned aside and grazed her lips tenderly against his earlobe.

"I forgive you."


	8. Revelations

**Author's note:** _If there's any folks reading this who have Spotify, I've been building a little playlist along with this, which you can find here: http: /open. spotify. com/user/kamikaze-tryst/playlist/1Sx34d3how5YUe6jjGDl99 (Don't forget to take out the spaces; for some reason doesn't show URLs unless you break them up.) Also, Jenny and Eli are not my characters. They belong to my darlin' Lily Fox, and you can find out more about them here: http: /lily-fox. deviantart. com/gallery/6632531_

* * *

Gabriel slept soundly that night, up on the balcony above the front door, where the moonlight filtered through the massive, circular window, bathing him in a kaleidoscope of colour as he leaned his back against the wall below it. His broad chest served as a pillow for Audrey, who lay between his legs, surrounded by the warmth of his burly arms. The stone cathedral wasn't the toastiest of buildings, Gabriel had found before having to borrow a pew cushion to sit on, rather than the cold, hard floor.

They'd kept themselves to themselves, despite the considerable number of refugees camping out there. Neither of them having been in the mood for anything but hitting the hay, Gabriel had turned more than a few heads by carrying them both up among the grandeur of the architecture and laying them to rest behind the marble balustrade.

When Audrey awoke from her gratifyingly dreamless slumber, Gabriel was still fast asleep. She inclined her head to watch him for a while, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart and pacing her own breathing to match the rise and fall of his torso. The morning light streamed through the prismatic glass overhead, causing shards of spring green and yellow to fall across his handsome features. His rounded cheeks were harmonically contradictory to his square, masculine jaw, and they gave him the most enchanting mouth that dipped in at the corners like tiny acorn cups.

Below, she could hear the sounds of people talking as the residents of the cathedral undoubtedly gossiped over their arrival. Careful not to stir him, she extracted herself from Gabriel's embrace and got up to look out from the gallery.

The priest was talking to the sheriff in the apse, right at the opposite end of the building, while the woman who had accompanied them at the door swung her arm around on the steps up to the chancel, playing with the biggest Mastiff Audrey had ever seen. Several people were on their knees before them, heads bowed in prayer, and even more were surreptitiously pointing up at Gabriel through the banister.

She looked from left to right, searching for a way down; both ends of the balcony led to darkened doorways. Pulling herself up, she took the one on the right, which led to a circular room with a spiral staircase leading down, and large ropes attached to three giant, dusty bells suspended overhead. The tower was poorly lit, and she slid her hands along the stone wall as she descended, to steady her footing.

As she stepped back out into the light, the ambient chatter died away, and she found herself facing what seemed like an ocean of curious, expectant faces. She recoiled a little, wishing she'd waited to come downstairs until Gabriel was awake. A middle-aged man limped forward to stand with a lady who appeared to be his wife; a young mother pulled her toddler up into her arms from the pew he where he lay, his head and wrist wrapped in slightly red-stained bandages. Audrey swallowed hard to level out the rising lump in her throat, and wrung her dampening hands.

What was she supposed to tell them? Surely they'd want to know what the hell was going on; how could she tell them that in fact, it wasn't Hell, but Heaven that brought this destruction upon them? That it was God's own high and mighty heartlessness that had gotten this little boy so badly hurt?

From somewhere towards the back, someone finally spoke, but their words were not directed at her. A familiar, rosy-bronze face came into view, smooth and striking as her rich, sumptuous voice.

"Come on now, guys. Back off," she ordered as she and her giant of a dog approached her. "Eli's calling a meeting up front." As she reached the last row of seats, she turned her back on Audrey and addressed those who had not moved. "_Shoo._"

A massive, droopy snout nuzzled her stomach.

"Don't waste any time, do you Samson?" The woman ribbed affectionately.

Audrey smiled down at the humongous, golden dog. She didn't even have to stretch to rub behind his dark ears, which matched his chocolate-muzzled face. He blinked his obsidian eyes at her from between his wrinkles as she knelt, bringing her just below eye-level with him.

"Hi there," she greeted him.

Samson lowered his slightly slobbery chops to Audrey's shoulder and she found herself struck by the generous sincerity of his love. His bright-smiled owner folded her arms.

"He's a darling, isn't he?"

"He's gigantic!" Audrey exclaimed happily.

As she reached around his neck to hug him back, she felt almost normal. There were no words of consolation to endure, nor sympathetic looks, and for just a moment she forgot anything had ever been troubling her. All the worries she'd been burdened by just dissipated among the dust motes that drifted in the beams of light from the east-facing windows, in which Samson's lustrous coat gleamed.

She couldn't help but think, wistfully, that perhaps humans weren't anywhere near as smart as they were so arrogantly fond of believing. _Maybe if we took a leaf out of your book, Samson, we wouldn't be in this ridiculous mess._

"I'm Jenny," the woman introduced herself, crouching to wobble her familiar's beefy back with her hand.

"Audrey."

"Pleased to meet you, Audrey," Jenny chuckled, retreating in defence as Samson's enormous tail whipped back and forth in her face. "I think somebody else is, too!"

Her laugh was like a chorus of wooden chimes in the wind. She seemed so carefree, with her honest, taciturn smile and the way she raked the front of her short, dark sienna hair out of her eyes with her fingers. Her very presence was like nutrition for the soul; fundamental righteousness radiated from her like ripples from a drop in the ocean, and yet she displayed no pride in her integrity whatsoever. Her long lashes dipped as her eyes flitted lovingly over Samson, who now rolled merrily between them beneath her tickles. She was a beacon of goodness.

Audrey's musings were brought to an abrupt end and her vital organs stopped cold when something large dropped to the marble floor beside her. She toppled sideward in shock, thankfully over a sturdy Samson, and glared, gasping, at the sudden arrival.

"How are you feeling?" Gabriel asked her, artlessly.

"Well that depends," she glowered, clutching at her heaving chest, "I assume you mean how _was_ I feeling, before you unceremoniously _scared the fucking shit out of me?_"

He took her language like the minor sting of a papercut, his brow crinkling ever-so-slightly for a moment, before he stooped to one knee before her.

"I'm sorry," he implored, reaching out to caress her flushed cheek. Samson stepped one gargantuan paw over Audrey's leg and growled menacingly at the peacebreaker.

"_Samson!_" Jenny wheezed reproachfully, having been startled by Gabriel's unexpected entrance herself.

Gabriel turned his attention to her at the sound of the familiar name and smiled.

"What an apt choice of name," he praised.

Moving his hand from Audrey's face, he raised it to pet Samson's head, but barely got a foot from his nose before he thought better of it. Jenny grabbed her furry friend's green, leather collar, tugging pleadingly on it until he backed down.

"Don't feel too bad," a man's mild voice came from behind. Gabriel looked over his shoulder to find the sheriff standing over them. "He doesn't like me much either."

With an endearing grin, he leaned down to place a kiss atop Jenny's fluffy, brunette head, eliciting a low, irritated grumble from Samson's throat. The new friends laughed together over the gentle giant between them as the priest made his way up the centre aisle.

"Jenny," Audrey began politely, before sinking to a more peevish tone for the one whom she was presenting: "Gabriel; Gabriel, Jenny."

Jenny's mouth fell open, along with the sheriff's, and the priest's as he joined them. The old man's mossy-green eyes tore themselves away from the living angel crouched before Audrey and landed upon a white statue, stood in an alcove in the wall between the top of the front door and the balcony's balustrade. Audrey and Gabriel both followed his gaze.

At the front, the Virgin Mary kneeled with baby Jesus in her arms, and Joseph looked adoringly over her shoulder. Behind them, bearing a serene smile and with palms upturned to Heaven, was a winged figure. It was draped in flowing robes, and had long, cascading waves of hair reaching all the way down to an unmistakeable pair of round, modestly-sized breasts.

Audrey tried desperately to keep herself under control, even holding her breath as an attempt at plugging it up, but it only made her inevitable snort all the more unladylike as she fell across Samson's vast, reclining body, howling with wild, irrepressible laughter.

Gabriel scowled, evidently offended by his feminine representation.

"You cannot seriously expect me to believe that's supposed to be me," he argued, but his exasperation was lost among Audrey's raucous amusement and the growing tittering in the background as people looked on from various distances amid the pews. At the sight of his friend's heedless, now tearful delight, he was no better able to control his pleasure than she was hers.

_How unreserved her joy is,_ he observed in admiration. Samson licked at her knee as she rested her damp cheek against his back. _Even if it is at my expense,_ he thought with a wry widening of his smile.

As Audrey came round, her eyes still glistening with mirth, the priest addressed the messenger of his God.

"Gabriel," he called warmly, hobbling closer into the circle as the archangel rose to his full, tremendous height. "Something real freaky's been going on." This sobered Audrey like a bucket of ice-water, and she climbed to her feet, listening intently. "Have you come to protect us?"

Her heart hammered beneath her ribs as she thought about the answers these people sought. _It would destroy this poor man,_ she worried, _to know the truth._

"No," Gabriel replied. "That danger is gone."

"Then why are you here?" The man with the limp called from his wife's side. "Why didn't you come when we needed you?"

"What _happened_ to those people who attacked us?" Asked the young mother, one hand holding her son's bandaged head close to the hollow of her neck.

Without missing a beat, Audrey seized Gabriel's hand and squeezed tightly.

"It was a virus," she concocted, unable to shatter their faith. She knew they'd accept it; they'd all seen the movies.

Gabriel looked down at her, entirely unsure, for the first time in his everlong life, of what he felt. Her little white lie resounded in his head as the cathedral discussed the explanation she'd given them.

His deep-rooted obedience told him it was wrong, but the sheer transparency of her reasoning precluded his reprimand. _After all she's seen,_ he marvelled,_ and everything she's suffered, she still protects Him._ Such loyal compassion was invaluable to him, and in that fraction of a moment, he knew. His heart swelled with something he'd only ever harboured for his Father: boundless, unconditional, all-encompassing love. There was nothing he would not do.

He couldn't take his eyes off her as he squeezed her petite fingers in return, hardly noticing the hush that fell upon the grand atrium once more.

"Does that mean the ones who got hurt are infected?" Somebody fretted near the back of the crowd.

"No," they both answered in unison. Gabriel continued: "The sickness is no longer infectious, but we must burn the dead nonetheless, as a precautionary measure." _That way,_ he thought gratefully,_ there will be fewer vessels nearby for Lucifer to commandeer._

"Well that's just _dandy_," the young mother jeered, "But you didn't answer Tobias' question: why didn't you come when we _needed_ you?"

Gabriel looked at the little boy in her arms. His cheeks were blotchy from crying; a tuft of ash-blonde hair peeked out from his bloodstained bandages in the middle of his forehead. He couldn't have been much over two years old.

"What is your name?" Gabriel enquired, making his way – Audrey in tow – towards her.

"Cecille." She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

Gabriel stood close to her and raised his hand to hover over her bewildered, suspicious head.

"May I?" He requested politely, but had no intention of pausing for consent. His palm came down atop the crown of her curly, coppery-brown locks; the other let go of his love's hand and rested upon the same spot. He wanted to share this with her, too.

Igniting dormant parts of their minds, he broadened the span of their vision. Audrey and Cecille gasped at what his efforts revealed before them.

Standing over the child, tenderly stroking his tired, wet face with a look of devoted concern, was a woman. She glowed with a celestial light of a colour Audrey had never seen, that didn't seem to emanate from anywhere specific, and didn't quite fall upon anything around her. She was wrapped in a long, strapless gown that fell in thick folds from the cord around her ribs, and framing her slender body from behind was a pair of large, white wings. Around her neck she wore a slightly less bulky version of Gabriel's metal collar.

It would have been astounding even if she'd been the only one, but as Audrey glanced about the previously sparsely-occupied pews, she saw hundreds more – a luminous blanket spread throughout the seats, and the air, as they watched over the refugees.

"The fact that most of us," Gabriel elucidated, "cannot be seen with your human eyes, or heard with your human ears, does not mean we're not here."

His point made irrefutably clear, he released Cecille's head, recaptured Audrey's hand and returned to the group at the back of the cathedral.


	9. The Prophecy

The meeting, Audrey and Gabriel discovered, had been to plan a reconnaissance expedition. The 'infected' hadn't attacked for over twenty-four hours now, and the cathedral's lodgers grew restless and hungry. In light of the news that the epidemic was over, Sheriff Eli re-evaluated the operation.

"So you're definitely sure it's all over?" He asked Gabriel, who bowed his head in verification.

"There are bodies in the streets," the archangel explained, "but they are no longer harmful."

Audrey tuned out at the word 'bodies'. She'd been trying frantically to block out the image of the dead, leering man that was burnt into her memory, and being close to Gabriel helped significantly, because he was a fantastically effective distraction, but she recognised that he had a lot of other people to look out for now, too. Quelling her discontent, she wandered off to explore.

Over the end of each of the pews, either side of the aisle, hung a brass candelabra bearing two tealights. Some were lit; some had died out in the night, but all of them held a bunch of dead, shrivelled, white gerbera daisies and baby's breath in a little cone below.

The great pillars that lined the nave were modestly embellished with sculpted ivy, and every third one featured a pointed-arched alcove near the top, accommodating a statue of a saint. Their eyes followed Audrey along the carpeted aisle as she neared the chancel.

The same desiccated, white gerberas hung limply from the three-day-old arrangements that sat upon the pedestals she passed on the way up. She counted seven steps, leaning her head back to behold the pictures painted between the vaults above. Chubby, naked cherubs frolicked happily among iconic images of Christ and his disciples, laughing and chatting among themselves; Audrey wondered what they talked about. Jesus was listening attentively to a bearded man in an olive robe, whose hands were raised as he spoke animatedly about something evidently entertaining. _Maybe the punchline of a joke,_ Audrey speculated, _or a story he heard from a farmer's wife._

The altar was bare besides the golden cross that stood in the centre on a mahogany base, matching the wood of the table. It was highly polished; the light from the massive window at the opposite end of the cathedral cast a white gleam across its glossy finish.

A rush of memories of Gabriel's kiss hit her like a tsunami. He'd set her down upon the altar so carefully; his hands had warmed her night-chilled cheeks while his lips had numbed everything else.

As she stared at the crucifix, where a miniature Jesus hung from his palms, she wondered if He would have considered it disrespectful. She leaned the heels of her hands on the table, her thoughts ambling between her growing affection for Gabriel and her severely weakened faith in God. _It was honest,_ she concluded. _There's no justifiable reason._

Glancing absently around, she noticed the chancel, which was narrower than the nave, had a small, wooden door on both sides. They'd been hidden, until now, by the drop of the giant curtain that lined the back of an ornate, wood-carved screen running across the top of the steps, a large archway at its midpoint. She straightened up and made towards the one on the right.

The door was ajar, and the familiar, flickering, orange glow of candlelight leaked through the crack and across the carpet. Upon pushing it open, she was rooted to the spot.

The small, stone room was littered with sheets of paper. They lay in clusters in the corners, on the little desk at the far end, and were tacked to the pinboard above it. Every piece was sketched across in dark pencil, and they were all of the same thing: a large tree, not unlike a Willow, except its branches grew not leaves, but tiny keys of every size, shape and shade imaginable. Venturing inside, she picked up an unfinished one from the floor, sending a pencil rolling across the floorboards.

"I'm not crazy," Jenny asserted from the doorway behind her, but when Audrey spun around in surprise, she didn't look as sure as she sounded.

"You did these?" She held up the drawing incredulously, watching Jenny nod.

"I've had that image ingrained in my mind for... well, since all this started." Audrey said nothing. "Don't you think that's weird?"

This time, she opened her mouth to answer, but Gabriel appeared in the doorway and she forgot what she was about to say. His lips parted in shock at the sight.

"Well, I think they're beautiful," Audrey declared. "What do the keys unlock?"

"Secrets," Gabriel whispered, attracting the girls' attention. His face was like poetry, telling of love, tragedy, hope and discovery.

Jenny looked from Gabriel to Audrey, her brow furrowed in perplexity, and moved towards the sketch.

"Do you know what this is?" She asked him, pointing to the swaying tree.

Gabriel was enraptured; he couldn't tear his eyes away, as if it were the portrait of an old friend, long since forgotten.

"It's the..." Remembering the story they'd wordlessly agreed upon, he stopped himself just in time. "It's a foretelling of my arrival," he told her, which wasn't completely untrue. "You're a prophet."

Jenny took a moment to absorb his announcement, then laughed. It was short-lived, however, because she realised nobody was laughing with her. She could only stare at him in disbelief.

"You... wait, hold on – you're telling me this image... came from _God?_"

Gabriel cocked his head to one side in consideration.

"Not exactly."

"Not _exactly?_" Jenny repeated.

"I cannot tell you what I don't know," he answered truthfully.

"But you're the Messenger of God... surely messages from God are like, your area of expertise?"

He would have smiled, had it not been for the sticky situation he found himself in. There was no way to tell her what he did know without letting on the lie. He looked to Audrey for help. She looked as confused as Jenny, but nodded in acceptance: she'd have to know.

"The people who attacked you were not victims of a pandemic," he admitted, watching her face carefully. "They were victims of the Lord's wrath."

She didn't speak, or even move.

"They were possessed by angels," Audrey elaborated, "on God's orders. They were sent to wipe us out."

Jenny's head whipped around to face her now. She didn't look upset, but furious. Her attention snapped back to Gabriel as he spoke again.

"My brother, Michael, managed to convince him otherwise-"

"But don't be angry at him," Audrey interrupted, desperately hurrying to get everything out before she exploded. "I was the one who started the lie. I just couldn't tell them... how do you break something like that?"

Her justification softened Jenny's features a little, but she still didn't look particularly pleased.

"So what's the significance of the tree, really?" She asked evenly.

"It's the tree of knowledge."

Both his confidantes' faces drained of expression.

"The tree Adam and Eve ate from?" Audrey asked, dumbfounded. "But what's with the keys?"

"They're metaphorical," Gabriel explained. "They represent the fruit it bears."

"Because of the _key_ role it played in humanity's fall from grace?" Jenny deduced, her anger forgotten among the nuggets of divine information.

"Because the fruit of knowledge is answers," he clarified. "God imbued that tree with everything he knew, in the hope that it would develop solutions to problems unhindered, and grow with each new thing He learned. Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree before it was ripe."

As Audrey looked down at the tree's sweeping branches once more, a head appeared in the doorway.

"You guys ready to go?" Eli asked.

"We'll be there in a sec," Jenny told him.

He gave a brief nod and disappeared again, and Gabriel stepped forward to place a hand on Jenny's shoulder.

"I'm truly sorry for deceiving you," he professed, "I hope you can understand that it was only out of concern."

She shrugged and nodded, looking around.

"I guess I would have done the same." Turning to Audrey, she held out her hand. "You coming with us?"

"Yeah," she answered, before Gabriel had time to disapprove.

Taking Jenny's hand, she started forwards, slipping her other into Gabriel's on the way past. They threaded through the door one by one, past the altar and stopped at the top of the chancel steps, where Eli gathered the dozen or so who were tagging along. Jenny entwined her fingers with Eli's, and together, lined up before God, they made an unstoppable force of righteousness.

Folding into a 'V', Gabriel and Eli led the way down the aisle towards the door, where the old priest unfastened the various bolts and barricades. Samson trotted along below Audrey and Jenny's clasped hands, so tall they brushed against his soft, sandy coat.

The morning sunlight was crisp and warm; their shadows followed in a long train behind them as they walked along the palm-bordered path. Gabriel turned left at the end as he and Eli had discussed, and the group crossed the street heading for the smashed doors of a supermarket on the other side. Even from the middle of the wide road, Audrey could already make out the prone form of a dark-haired woman just inside.

The procession slowed upon realising this, but she tightened her grip on the two hands feeding her courage and took a steadying breath. _It's over now,_ she reminded herself as she received two reassuring squeezes.

In the shade of the building, Audrey's vision was tinged with blue as her eyes adjusted from the tangerine hue of the sun. Gabriel and Eli stepped forward to roll the body onto its back, preparing to take an end each and move it outside, but both of them dropped their grip on it when they saw her. Eli jumped back, horrified; Gabriel threatened another episode of sorrow.

The woman was Southeast Asian with sleek, black hair and porcelain skin. Around her head she wore a lilac bandana, tied into a knot at her nape. Her eyes were frozen wide open in terror and one half of her lower lip had been torn away by the tiny, razor-sharp teeth of the infant she cradled. The baby had a bullet wound just above its ear, and the mother had a few to the chest, while the floor was covered in casings and blood.

Several people backed up and ran for the cathedral as fast as their legs would take them. Jenny pulled Audrey close, one hand over her mouth, but the scene was wavering before her; she had to get away. Detaching herself and staggering past the transfixed sheriff, Audrey found herself an abandoned cart and leaned over the handlebar as it skidded away into the store, Samson at her side.

She turned a corner absently and closed her eyes tight, concentrating on the tapping of Samson's claws against the tiles, trying to forget. They were even and rhythmic as she listened, and the wheels of the cart squeaked in time, until they hit an obstacle in the middle of the aisle.

_Shit._ Her heart pounded and she felt as though every vein in her body was fit to burst as she heard the defensive snarl spill from Samson's chest. _Shit, shit, shit._

Gripping the cart tighter, she opened her eyes.


	10. Amor

The aisle ahead was perfectly clear. Audrey looked down at Samson, who growled back at her through his sharp, bared teeth, but between one second and the next, his great paws stumbled, his legs giving way beneath him, and he collapsed into a furry pile on the floor. A hand clamped around her mouth, impeding her scream, while a vice-like arm came around her middle, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Salvē, _Amor_," a man's voice breathed raggedly in her ear, his grin audible among the strange words. She fought to break free of his grip, her mind a hysterical whirlwind of terror after the things she'd seen in the past three days. "Shhhh," the voice hushed, chuckling quietly; "He's still alive."

Darkness crept upon her like a heavy blanket, and her weight transferred from her feet to the support of a large pair of arms. Her sleeping head lolled against a cool, bare chest, and her dangling legs swung to one side as if she were strapped to the nose of a bullet train.

Her kidnapper stepped, barefoot, onto hot, amber coals. They hissed and crackled under their weight as he crossed to an island of smooth, black rock with a raised divan carved into it. He laid her reverently down and waited.

Audrey's eyelids fluttered as she regained consciousness. _Where the hell am I?_ She asked the cavernous ceiling of stalactites above. The air was humid and thick with the smell of smoke, but goosebumps covered her skin despite the heat.

"Welcome," a low, hoarse voice greeted her, sending her pulse buzzing with fear as she rolled into a crouch behind the platform, "to the ninth circle of Hell."

Her mind was reeling as she gasped deep lungfuls of the acrid atmosphere, absorbing the man before her. He was dressed only in a loose pair of salwar trousers that pulled into cuffs just below his knees. His skin was scarred and filthy, and his eyes were a piercing emerald green beneath his mess of ashen-blonde hair.

"Lucifer," she whispered, muted by the vivacious sounds of the coals.

She glanced around; this was a cathedral of a very different kind. In the shadowy distance on either side she could just make out a few holes resembling windows, though no light shone through them.

Lucifer smiled at her recognition as molten lava rose and solidified upon itself behind him, fashioning a throne-like chair crowned with a series of large thorns across the back. He sat, resting one ankle across his knee.

"We meet at last," he murmured. He read Audrey's face like a book. "You may be a stranger to my brothers, Audrey, but I have been a prominent possibility in your fate for a long time." A sudden huff of amusement escaped him. "Well, a long time to you, anyway."

"But... the holy water—" she argued weakly.

"So I broke the rules," he shrugged, grinning. "Isn't that what I do best?"

"I don't understand... I didn't die." Audrey was verging on tears now, crushed beneath the gravity of the situation. "Why have you brought me here?"

Lucifer leaned forward in his seat, his eyes blazing dangerously.

"I took you because I _wanted to_," he justified simply; "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"What do you mean?" Audrey asked quietly, cowering from his volatile nature.

The former angel paused, staring at the terrified, bewildered expression she wore.

"You're trying to tell me Gabriel doesn't know?"

"Know what?"

His victorious grin grew wider as he reclined against the back of his throne once more.

"The prophets have been whispering, _Amor_," he crooned, inspecting his blackened fingernails in boastful arrogance. "_The key approaches in the form of love,_" he recited, "_and its nurturers shall be rewarded._"

Audrey's memory snagged on the word 'key', but there was no time to dwell on it as Lucifer got up and circled around the back of the chair. Over the recesses of his shoulder blades, two large, oval scars shone in the dim glow of the coals. He wrapped his fingers around two of the throne's horns from behind and for a split second, Audrey thought she saw the slip of a mask.

"Before all this," he continued, watching little parts of the volcanic rock crumble away beneath his thumbs; "Before the oh-so-righteous _Lord_ broke his oath and brought on the Second Reckoning... did you believe He existed?"

She gripped the sculpted Belladonna-flowered edge of the divan, wondering why he could possibly care, and shook her head.

"And what do you believe now?"

The conflict going on within Audrey's mind was a familiar one, except this time, rather than feeling a sense of habitual goodness, her better judgement told her she should be afraid, and yet she found herself slowly rising to her feet, observing the fair-haired Fallen One vigilantly.

"I believe I made the right choice in not believing," she answered assertively.

Lucifer looked up at her, genuinely surprised. He snapped the two largest horns off and tossed them behind him.

"Is that so?"

Audrey stood motionless as he stalked around the chair and stepped towards her, until only the divan stood between them. Every cell in her body screamed danger, but she was held in place by one tiny, barely discernable crease between his brows.

"Hypocrites don't make very good parents," she pointed out, and the crease grew noticeably deeper. "What happened to you?"

Just like that, it was gone. His face relaxed back into an indifferent disguise and he slumped into his throne, arranging his sooty feet one atop the other on the edge of the divan.

"That, _Amor_," he sneered, "is none of your concern."

She looked at him with something akin to pity, and it flung him into a terrifying onset of rage. He was standing on the platform, lifting her by the throat before she'd even had a chance to register he'd moved.

His thumb dug into her oesophagus, cutting off her albeit polluted air supply. Her fingers grappled at his hand as her face began to redden.

"I see right through you, little girl," he spat. "You won't succeed."

He glared at her only another moment, before his features slid into a look of thorough boredom and he released her. In the fall, her head cracked against a sharp, stone Nightshade blossom, and her arm fell across the edge of the island onto the scorching coals. With a coughing shriek she pulled her arm in to her chest and rolled onto her side, wheezing her dizziness away.

When she was able to breathe slowly enough that it didn't strain her muscles to inhale, she rolled onto her back to find Lucifer sitting on the divan, looming over her with his elbows on his knees. He was playing with a silver lighter, flicking the lid back and forth through each tiny burst of flame. On the side, it was engraved with a word. She squinted through the gloom to read it: 'Hope'. There was something familiar about it, but Audrey couldn't quite name it.

His emerald eyes swept over her burnt arm, then rolled in exasperation as he reached down and ran his fingertips along it. She gasped, expecting the raw skin to sear with pain at his touch, but it merely tickled as it would anywhere else.

Not daring to sit up, she angled her elbow up a little to look along where the injury had been – it had disappeared. She blinked, absolutely clueless on how to even begin to comprehend this strange, fickle man who now extended a hand to help her up.

Fury bubbled in her chest like acid. She reached behind her and pushed herself back from him, glowering as fiercely as Lucifer had himself.

"You," she snapped, "are the most bi-polar bastard I've ever met."

She pulled herself up at the opposite end of the divan to where he sat, surveying her, and he laughed.

"Well, you got the fatherless part right."

He stood and walked away across the coals without another word, leaving Audrey trapped and alone in the deepest depths of Hell.

She scowled into the darkness after him, tears pricking at her eyes as she realised this might not be a temporary arrangement. _Please, Gabriel,_ she willed, _come and find me._ She curled up on the hard, carved bed, imagining his strong arms around her, and the cool metal of his collar against her temple. She wondered how long it would take him to notice she'd gone, and if he'd have any idea where she'd disappeared to. _Hopefully he'll find Samson and know,_ she thought. _Hopefully._

_Hope... the lighter._

Audrey sat upright.

"He's been to paradise falls," she muttered to herself.

"So what if I have?" His voice came out of the darkness; she couldn't be sure from which direction.

She said nothing. The loss of her parents hit her again like a powerful after tremor. Their bodies would still be there now: her dad hung upside-down outside, her mother in the doorway with a bullet in her brain. She crossed her legs and leaned on them, balled fists joined in an apex against her mouth. _How could He?_

Something suddenly occurred to her; the beat in her chest doubled in pace.

"The people who died in all this," she called into the void; "If humanity's in God's bad books... are they here, in Hell?"

A silhouette emerged from the hidden extent of the room, the coals sizzling beneath his every step. Even as he came into view, Audrey couldn't decipher his expression. He looked almost hurt.

"Asking after someone in particular?"

She rubbed her forehead with her overwrought fingertips and fought against the lump in her throat.

"My parents," she whispered, not trusting the pitch of her voice to remain constant long enough for even just two words.

"Howard and Sandra Anderson," he elaborated. It wasn't a question. "No, they're not here anymore."

"_Any more?_"

The thought of them suffering even a moment of this place gouged at her heart. _How long were they here?_ She wondered, distraught. Her tears were irrepressible now; her sobs caught in her throat as she tried to draw breath between them.

Lucifer stepped closer and perched on the arm of his volcanic throne.

"Those who were thrown in here during the Apocalypse were not harmed in any way," he told her. She looked up at his apple-green eyes and saw naked sincerity. "I give you my word."

Audrey took a deep breath as her anxiety subsided. She brushed away the couple of tears still rolling down her cheeks and he looked completely taken off guard.

"You're comforted by this," he noted aloud.

"Of course I am."

"You trust the word of Satan?" He asked, incredulous.

She thought back to what Gabriel had said at the motel: _That depends, on whether you consider Satan and the 'Devil' to be one and the same._

"No, but I trust the word of the Devil," she replied; "There's a little of him in all of us."

He cocked his head to one side and folded his arms, apparently intrigued.

"I was pushed," Lucifer announced; Audrey just stared at him, completely lost.

"Sorry?"

"You asked what happened to me," he backtracked; "I didn't _fall_ from grace, I was pushed."

His words hung in her mind like bubbles of oil suspended in water, slowly rising to the surface, but the question they formed was cut off by the growing hissing of the coals to her right.

* * *

**Glossary**

_Salvē, Amor_ : Hello, love


	11. Space & Time

**Author's note: **_I just want to thank you all again for the lovely reviews. :D They really motivate me because, I guess I get excited to feed people more!_

_This chapter's a liiitle bit heavy, but it'll only make future parts sweeter, I promise. ;)_

_Don't forget you can read more regular chunks of this and discuss stuff in more depth over at my journal: hasu-hime. livejournal. com!_

* * *

Something was manifesting over the coals, visibly stretching the air like a balloon and yet consuming all of the little surrounding light, creating a dense mass of darkness. It grew quickly, pulsing like a great, black heart, and Lucifer leapt between it and Audrey, sweeping her in against his lean frame just as it exploded in a supernova of emptiness, enveloping them in almost total sensory shutdown. The only things left that told her she was still alive were the thrashing against the inside of her ribcage and the rapid rise and fall of the heat-dampened torso she was locked against.

The crackling of the ground was gone; there was no divan beneath her, nor gravity to fix her down. A strange pressure expanded around them, and Lucifer's arms tightened. She froze in unadulterated terror as she felt the familiar, deceptive caress of her marine ex-boyfriend across her cheek, just like he used to touch her before he swung his fist. A sharp scratch on the crook of her elbow nauseated her as she recalled the price she once paid for her first and only hit of heroin. Her tears flowed freely and her breath came short and shallow, exactly as it had before; she could feel the dealer's hand slithering up the inner side of her thigh.

"Puella _non tua_," Lucifer snarled over her head. The silent, horrific attack continued. "_SISTITE!_" He bellowed into the vacuum as her weeping became cries of physical pain.

A brightness erupted around them, forcing the darkness back and eliciting a gasp from Audrey as the pain transformed into something else. The shadows retreated and dissolved until the cavernous room returned to the way it previously had been, leaving her breathless and weak but, comparatively, incredibly calm.

It lasted only the brief moment it took for the light to blow away the darkness, however, before Audrey was snatched from Lucifer's protection and hauled into the air by a mighty arm about her middle. She screamed in shock, though she knew precisely whom it belonged to. Struggling against it, she watched Lucifer's platinum-framed face shrink, full of fury, as she was stolen away. The huge, gloomy room seemed to slowly glaze over the higher she was pulled, like a window into another world.

Her mind swarmed with questions – some of which only Lucifer could answer, others, she suspected he could offer a less biased answer.

"No!" Audrey protested; "_Wait!_"

It was too late. They were surrounded by white mist, which diffused as Gabriel descended again to reveal the flat roof of the store below. She continued to push on his steadfast grip despite their altitude, enraged over a thousand different things.

He released her the second he landed, setting her down gently, but she stumbled a little anyway in her determination to break free. He turned to her, disorientated, as though she'd just told him that Hell wasn't really so bad.

"Did he hurt you?" His hands came up to cup Audrey's face but she took a step backward, raising her own in absent command.

She couldn't think straight. Nothing made sense; she had a billion reasons to hate Gabriel, and a billion more for his outcast brother, and yet she couldn't decide whether to deck or pity either of them.

Trying to pace her breathing and clear her thoughts, she looked around. The group of explorers looked on from the doorway of the supermarket; Jenny's fingers were wrapped around the handle of a shopping cart carrying Samson, still sleeping, while the others ducked to pick up things that had fallen off the mountain of food and supplies in another.

_The prophecy; the key; her parents' incarceration; Lucifer's 'fall';_ Audrey couldn't concentrate on any one issue. Her brain was an angry, frothing pot on a stove, overflowing with fat, glistening bubbles full of absolutely nothing. She'd _still_ be none the wiser, she knew, because for the first time in her life she was thinking before she spoke. She couldn't bring herself to hurl cutting, accusatory questions at Gabriel; he was already acutely aware of his misdeeds. All he'd done was exactly as he'd been told, by the highest authority in existence.

She held her tongue, not even daring to look him in the eye, but her heart was too full of rage to contain – it had to disperse somehow. There was nothing for her to do but cry in exhausted frustration.

He moved to comfort her, and she turned and walked away, back toward the temple of He who had destroyed her life. Ironically, it was the only place she'd found any kind of solace since this madness had begun.

Gabriel was left standing in the middle of the road, feeling more lost than he ever had in all his millennia. He was sure she wept over the lies Lucifer had no doubt fed her, but he'd thought she were smarter than to listen to him.

He looked at the group once more before bending his knees and kicking off from the road, into his Father's bluest of midday skies. Recalling the protective way Lucifer had held her, as if trying to shield her from Satan's torture, he tried to piece the situation together. _He doesn't want her dead,_ he construed; _If he did, he's losing his touch – he's had plenty of chances._

Sailing aimlessly on the breeze, he cleared his mind of everything but Audrey. She obviously wished to be alone for a while; he wouldn't begrudge her a little space, despite the continuously increasing ache he felt without her in his arms.

He wondered if it was a similar kind of ache humans felt without God. He'd never been this long away from His side. It was strangely exhilarating, yet Gabriel couldn't help missing His physical presence. The thought of thousands of years of this feeling, as humanity had endured since Adam and Eve's defiance, made his heart heavy; he turned his thoughts back to Audrey.

The sound of her laughter at the statue over the cathedral door reverberated through his memory. He smiled at the endearing way she'd blushed over her noisy hunger pangs, and his breath hitched as he remembered the way she'd kissed him back upon the altar. He'd tried so hard to hide his disappointment when she'd pulled away, wishing feverishly for more. It wasn't the only thing he'd had to hide as he'd lifted her and carried them both up onto the balcony, either.

He faced the same sort of problem now, as he perched on the edge of the cathedral's topmost spire in the sunlight. Judging by its position, about an hour had passed since he'd left his love to walk away in tears. Gabriel closed his eyes and replayed the rescue from Hell over again in his mind, searching for what could have made her so angry with him. He knew he'd done something to upset her – she'd made that clear when she'd flatly rejected his embrace. _Surely she wanted to be rescued,_ he conjectured; _Had I not, the inconceivable agony would have killed her, and there'd be nothing even Lucifer could do._

His brother still had some residual angelic abilities, he knew, but the Elatio Divina was not one of them. _Whatever protection from Satan's attack he may have been trying to provide her,_ he thought, climbing in through one of the bell tower windows and making his way down the spiral staircase, _he could not provide light, for he has none._

As he closed the bell tower door behind him, Gabriel's eyes immediately pinpointed Audrey by the silvery glow of the new corona surrounding her fawn-brown head, invisible to her limited human vision, but blazing like a beacon across the pews to him. She'd been marked. She was now a part of a series of mysterious foretellings that neither he, nor the Lord himself understood.

She sat at the end of the front bench on the left, using the new supplies to tend Cecille's son's head wound. The boy, he saw as he drew closer, sat wide-eyed and calm upon his mother's knee, despite the sting of Audrey's touch against the cut. She was already using the gifts that came with sainthood, completely unaware.

Gabriel smiled down at her bowed, illuminated head as he rounded the end of the pew.

"You perform the duties of an angel well," he praised, watching her ministrations proudly.

"Yeah, that's me," she answered without looking up, her deadpan tone like a sudden lead weight in Gabriel's chest; "Human bandaid, makeshift angel – what _exactly_ are the duties of an angel, anyway?" She looked up now, having secured a fresh dressing on the child's forehead. "To kick us down, or to care for us?"

She couldn't help herself. The dregs of bitterness inside her had festered in his absence, and after all he'd done he had the audacity to compare her to an angel. Audrey could see he was hurt, but so was she.

"To carry out God's will," Gabriel replied, almost sheepishly.

Her old, derisive nature reared its ugly head as she thought of the mindless, morality-deficient mob that had snatched her father from her very arms.

"I thought God's will was that the human race be slaughtered like the runt of the litter?" His head jerked back a little, as though she'd struck him. "God never asked me to do this, and it's not for _His_ sake I do it."

She got up and began to climb the chancel steps, heading for the solitude of Jenny's sketch-strewn side chamber, but stopped at the top with a weary sigh.

"I've heard the phrase 'all Hell breaking loose'," she murmured over her shoulder, "but Hell was like a nice little vacation from what I've suffered at the hands of your kind. You don't expect that from the good guys."

A twitch of irritation sprung through Gabriel; an Apocalypse might not have been the best way to address the problem but it wasn't by any means unprovoked.

"Maybe that's what He got tired of," he defended.

"What," she laughed indignantly, turning back to face him, "being the good guy?"

"Being taken forgranted," he replied, unconsciously straightening up in authority. His fingers curled restlessly in waves as he fought to keep his temper.

"If patience isn't His thing he should never have created us," Audrey argued.

"I wouldn't know personally, but I'd imagine raising children is a difficult business."

"Only for hypocrites," she reiterated the opinion she'd given Lucifer. "Why is it that parents expect us to follow the rules, but _they_ can break them without consequence? How can God lay down the law, yet get away with murder Himself? Tell me," she fumed, "how is that _at all_ fair?"

Audrey's voice resonated throughout the cathedral now, but they were both oblivious of their audience.

"Humanity hasn't followed the commandments for thousands of years," he scoffed.

"Some still do! Some are still under the delusion that He loves us!"

Gabriel's handsome features softened in sympathy. His chest tightened at the thought: _Is that it?_ He wondered. _People don't believe because they doubt His love?_

"He does love you," he reassured her softly; "He loves all of you."

"_Bullshit!_ We're expendable to Him – He's just proven that!" Audrey didn't even care about maintaining the virus lie anymore. "We're just crops for the crows. This harvest didn't turn out so well – never mind, He can always plant more!"

"We should not question him," Gabriel countered, running out of viable contentions.

"Says who?" She scorned. "God? That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me."

"His wisdom is unparalleled," he claimed uncertainly.

"Yeah, that's how half the planet ended up dead, is it?"

Gabriel said nothing; there was nothing to be said. She was right, and there was no way around it. He brushed away the tear that charged down his cheek, ashamed that she'd managed to make him doubt the Lord. His Father was the only thing he'd ever been absolutely sure of.

He turned, stretching his wings abruptly, before soaring down the nave and disappearing through the front door, which the group had left open upon their return to combat the midday humidity in the atrium.

Fear gripped Audrey's heart as she realised what was happening. _No,_ she prayed to the God she hated as she sprinted down the aisle after him; _Fuck, no!_

She lurched through the doorway, stopping just short of the steps.

"You swore you'd never leave me!" Hollering at the disappearing dot in the cloud-streaked sky, she wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly very cold. "I love you," she reasoned, but it was a whisper Gabriel never heard.

* * *

**Glossary **(I don't actually speak Latin so if anyone happens to, feedback would be appreciated!)

_Puella non tua_ : The girl is not yours

_Sistite_ : Stop it


	12. Champion of the Damned

**Author's note:** _Sorry about the wait, guys! I had a few plot-related decisions to make and I'm in the process of moving house and job, too, so things have been a bit hectic recently. I'm back now though, and we're starting to really move towards the core of the story. Enjoy! :)_

* * *

Silently begging her forgiveness, Gabriel coasted on the clouds leaving Audrey standing, forlorn, in the arch of the cathedral doorway. He should have made it clear, but he had no intention of breaking his promise – not permanently, at least. The very notion was ludicrous; he couldn't imagine spending the rest of eternity wondering what else she might have taught him.

He didn't go far; he didn't need to. His destination was not the sort of place you could plot on a map. It was closer to what the humans understood as an alternate dimension: another version of the same place.

The clouds darkened into billowing smoke and he flew over streets and buildings no more. The ground was a sprawling blanket of ash punctuated by frozen lakes and strings of black mountains. He made straight for the colossal fortress built into the mouth of the volcano on the scarlet horizon, dodging and deflecting the tiny, dark specks that hovered in the dusty air around him.

The window of the topmost tower wasn't quite as darkened as it had been before; he could see the orange glow cast by the coal-lined floor inside. A silhouette appeared; Lucifer was waiting.

He increased his speed, building up momentum so that when he reached the fortress, he was able to pull in his wings and fling himself through the narrow window. Lucifer watched with an arrogant grin – Gabriel knew he wouldn't move. He dived headlong into him, sending them rolling across the scorching coals.

The blinding pain of the floor's extreme heat hit him in waves as they went; he yelped and let go of his laughing brother, pulling himself aloft with his mighty wings. Breathing hard from exertion and anger, he watched, dumbfounded, as Lucifer got to his feet, snickering to himself.

He'd never been inside the fortress before he'd rescued Audrey – he'd never had need to be – but he knew as well as any angel what was contained within its walls. He hung over his brother, his vast wings treading air to keep him afloat.

"Impossible," he breathed.

"Feeling a little guilty, brother?" Lucifer taunted, cackling as he brushed himself off.

"They don't burn you," Gabriel remarked, thoroughly perplexed.

"They never have."

"Then you're either so far astray you feel no remorse, or..." _No,_ he rebuffed immediately. _He's here for good reason; I witnessed his crime with my own eyes._ "What did you say to her?"

Lucifer sauntered towards his seat before the black, stone divan. Gabriel followed, alighting atop the belladonna-bordered platform to stand over his unconcerned brother.

"I've no idea what you're talking about," Lucifer feigned.

Gabriel leapt from the divan, fury coursing through his veins, his sable wings bursting forth as he seized the Devil by the throat and lifted him high above his thorny throne.

"Whatever you've done," he whispered dangerously, "you've only marked her by doing it. You _will_ fail."

Lucifer's laugh came in strained snorts, his face reddening by the second as he gripped the archangel's wrist.

"How ominous," he mocked, his voice a rasping mumble. "I'm flattered you think her marking," he paused, struggling on the little air he had left, "was my doing."

With immense willpower, Gabriel let him plummet to the coals beside his volcanic seat, where he lay spluttering and gasping amid his amusement, unperturbed by the heat.

"Then again, perhaps it was," he jibed. "We _were_ getting rather cosy when you gatecrashed."

Landing on the island, Gabriel ignored his brother's desperate attempt at provoking him.

"You're lying," he accused. "There's nowhere else those prophecies could have come from."

"You really haven't heard," Lucifer chortled with disbelief. "What have you been doing with that little wench to have you so distracted?"

"_Desinet dicere per enigmata!_" Gabriel commanded, his bellow echoing around the cavernous room.

"I speak no riddles, brother," the Devil grinned gleefully. "The situation is intrinsically so."

Having recovered, Lucifer got up and resumed his seat, lounging sideways across it, one leg dangling lazily over the arm. He pushed his white-blonde hair out of his eyes, putting on a show with a yawn. _He certainly seems boastful enough to be lying,_ Gabriel thought.

"We merely discussed our mutual resentment for your precious 'God'," Lucifer drawled. "That and the disgraceful little fact that He tossed her parents in here, even if only until He came to His senses."

"Of course," Gabriel seethed. "Of _course_ that would be the first thing you taunted her with, you filthy, unconscionable—"

"_Actually,_ it was _she_ who brought it up, not I."

"And her marking?" He was answered by another fit of sardonic laughter.

"That was your doing, _Gabriel_," Lucifer spat, "not mine."

"I did nothing!"

"You fell in love," his brother rolled his eyes, as if it were the most obvious, abhorrent thing in all the Worlds.

Gabriel froze. _It's plausible... _he considered; _could that be what dragged her into this?_ Thoughts of her shining, turquoise eyes and gentle lips, her compassion and capacity for benevolence and the way she wore her heart on her sleeve flooded his senses once more.

Lucifer's explanation grew more credible the more Gabriel reflected on it. _What if I've put her in danger?_ He worried, blanching, but he knew there was nothing to be done now but protect her.

"What do you want with her?" He asked his brother, hostility replacing the shock.

"I want only what I've always wanted," Lucifer replied, his tone innocent until his last, menacing word: "Out."

"Never," Gabriel disparaged.

He could see his brother knew something he didn't, and he didn't understand any of the cryptic answers he offered, but as far as he was concerned the conversation was over. He turned and spread his wings, lifting himself into the darkness and dissolving away to the Midworld.

Lucifer swung his legs back over the arm of his chair to the ground and leaned upon his knees, watching the jagged ceiling long after his brother's departure. _What a monumental waste of half a day,_ he thought caustically, his piercing, emerald stare boring into the rock above. A stalactite the size of a small tree cracked under the pressure of his furious scowl and fell in a brief moment of silence before shattering across the coals with a deafening crash that ricocheted off the distant borders of the room. Lava seeped up through the indentation it had made in the gravelly floor like a pool of thick, orange blood, smouldering in the shadows.

When he'd heard the prophecy spill from the motel owner's lips, the day before the Judgement had begun, he'd thought it was a warning. _The key approaches; it could only mean one thing,_ he'd deduced. _The key to peace; the defeat of all evil. The key to my demise._

He knew it wouldn't matter to his blinkered Father whether he was truly guilty or not. That decision had been made aeons ago. He'd survived thus far only through the strange, symbiotic relationship that had come to develop between himself and Satan: the collective convergence of all the malice, greed, vanity, salacity and pride that had been severed from every soul ever to have existed. He depended on it for protection, and in return, Satan used the former archangel to do its bidding – a figurehead at which the Worlds could direct their hatred. Such was his reward for loyalty to the Lord.

He curled his bare toes over the incandescent coals, feeling nothing but cool rock crumbling beneath him. He gave a disdainful snort at how Gabriel had reacted to the revelation that they didn't affect him, and wondered how long it would serve as a distraction from the fact that they _did_ burn Gabriel. Clearly, he was feeling less than vindicated in his fulfilment of the Lord's will. Here, pain only came to those deserving of it.

Lucifer made sure of this on a daily basis. Every now and then, a soul would reach Hell's gates intact, having been condemned in its entirety by the bigotry of Heaven. Sometimes it took a closer look to determine the good from the bad – something that the Lord had shown patience for less and less frequently of late. In cohesion over injustice, Lucifer endeavoured to filter the intake of souls for the occasional nugget of gold, which he would send on its way back to the Light where it belonged – where _he_ belonged.

He missed it terribly. The bright, bountiful garden; the bashful deer and the affectionate dogs and the mischievous otters in the river. The friendship of his brothers and the security of being a part of something. The warmth of his Father's love. Family. Two millennia had passed and the ache for his old life was still as potent as ever.

The coals hissed loudly as his feet crushed them to ashes below, and he almost missed it:

_Lucifer._

He lifted himself up into a crouch in his stone seat and froze, listening.

_Lucifer,_ the soft, tearful whisper came again.

_It's her,_ he realised in astonishment. He glanced around; there was no sign of the dense, telltale blackness that was Satan – it was no deception. _She's calling to me._

He closed his eyes, sinking back into his chair with his legs tucked up before him, and pushed through the nine veils separating them, to answer.

Finding himself sitting at one end of a long, narrow rowing boat, he saw that Audrey was curled up opposite him, her ankles crossed and her face buried in the circle of her arms which held her knees together. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably as she wept; she didn't seem to have noticed his appearance.

Slowly and deftly, he moved himself closer to the centre of the boat, absently taking in the still, endless water surrounding them: she was stranded. _Doesn't she realise how unimaginably dangerous this is?_ Lucifer thought as he reached out to run his fingertips over the delicate, white ridge of her ankle. It recoiled a little as her head snapped up with a gasp of surprise.

Her tear-tracked face and her turquoise eyes shone in the silvery rinse of moonlight, and Lucifer stared back at her, thoroughly bewildered as he wondered why this beautiful, fragile creature would possibly have called _his_ name, presumably for comfort, rather than his brother's. He said nothing, terrified of pushing away the only potential friend he'd found in over two thousand years, though he'd never, in just as long, have admitted it.

"Where am I?" She asked, barely louder than the rush of ripples sent gliding from the boat by her sudden movement.

"You tell me," Lucifer murmured; "It's your dream."

Audrey looked around at the bleak, isolating expanse of stagnant water. It was vast as an ocean, yet motionless as mirror, reflecting the starless sky. The silence was oppressive; she found herself sighing just to break it.

"I know you haven't led a perfect life," Lucifer asserted impassively, "but I didn't have you down as the Devil-summoning type."

"You're the only one who's not trying to pretend that God had good reason to murder everyone I ever cared about in cold blood."

He couldn't tear his eyes away from her plea; another tear fell from her glistening gaze as she blinked, and her sincerity overthrew him. She asked for no power, nor revenge, as was most common among those who dared to call upon him. She laid her trust down before him merely for his sympathetic company in return. He'd never encountered anything of the like in the entirety of his imprisonment.

A slow, chilly breeze rolled across the surface of the water, bringing his Hell-slicked skin to Audrey's attention as goosebumps appeared, raising the short, light hairs of his torso. No sooner had he shivered, a dark, fleece blanket materialised around his shoulders. They both stared at it in shock, but each for wholly different reasons.

Lucifer teetered on the edge of thanking her, but succumbed to the selfish hope that she wouldn't discover she was the one in control. Instead, he pulled the blanket higher over his neck and opened it at the front to share with her. Tentatively, she crawled forward, and turned to the side to lean against him.

It was awkward at first, but the rigidity of a hug between strangers gradually melted away until Audrey's head rested against Lucifer's chest, and his hands clasped together, providing a brace for her back in the shelter of the soft blanket.

"How did they die?" He asked her quietly, and waited patiently as she floundered slightly at the question Gabriel had been too afraid to voice.

"My dad was... bitten in the neck," she replied unsteadily, recalling that terrifying first encounter; "He was in pretty bad shape but we managed to slow the b... the bleeding. Then later on, they attacked dragged him away." She dropped her gaze from the horizon to a cluster of scars on Lucifer's bicep, not unlike the scratch of a claw. When she spoke again, it was in a barely audible whisper. "The next morning, we found him tied upside down outside, covered in massive blisters. One of our group from the diner died saving my mom when they burst; it ate clean through his flesh like some sort of acid."

She was sobbing in earnest now, and tears of pity formed in the Devil's eyes above her. He was no stranger to the Lord's temperamental nature, but this... _This was more than just Judgement,_ he realised. _This was retribution._

"My mom died long before Michael put a bullet in her head. I've never seen her so out of control; she was always so logical and composed, because she cared a lot about what other people thought. When Gabriel arrived, she totally lost it and snatched Charlie's baby, planning on handing him over and telling me to come with her. He broke down the door and..."

She couldn't finish, but she didn't need to. Lucifer knew.

"He used his little ecstasy trick and Michael was forced to prevent him from winning her over." Audrey nodded, turning in further to him as he pulled the blanket closer around her heaving shoulders. "No wonder the coals burned him."

It was a few minutes before Audrey registered his comment, and her tears relented enough for her to speak again:

"Burned who?" She wondered if he meant Michael, since Gabriel hadn't even landed when he'd rescued her.

"Gabriel," Lucifer clarified; "He paid me another little visit this afternoon." Something occurred to him – he spent a moment recounting her tale in his head, searching for an explanation, but came up empty. "What is it you feel guilty about?" Audrey pulled back a little to look up at him; his bright, bottle-green eyes were just as vivid even in the moon's dull gleam. He took it as a question. "I healed your arm when the coals burned you. They only burn those who feel they have something to repent for."

She broke her connection with his viridian scrutiny and shrunk into the depths of the warm blanket.

"It was all my fault."

"What was?" Lucifer enquired.

"My parents' deaths," she answered, her voice wavering again. Lucifer's body tensed around the weeping girl in anger.

"How, _precisely_, do you come to that conclusion?" His words were a low rumble of imminent danger, like distant thunder warning of the storm to come.

"I was the reason we were moving to Palm Springs. If we hadn't been moving we'd never have ended up at Paradise Falls."

Nothing could have prepared Audrey for the wrath of his reaction. Lucifer seized her shoulders and turned her towards him, gripping so hard she was losing the feeling in her arms.

"_Stulte puella!_" he raged, his face just inches from hers. The infinite emptiness surrounding them deadened the sound, making it all the more real and frightening. "Do not let your regrets blind you to the true perpetrator!" _I wasted lifetimes upon lifetimes doing so,_ he seethed to himself.

Audrey was rendered speechless at his lightning-fast shift in temper. Her sobs of terror came fast and heavy, only igniting Lucifer's fury further.

"Cease your tears!" He shook her, rocking the boat violently beneath them. "_Sistite!_"

The vessel capsized, finally releasing her from his grip, and impenetrable darkness engulfed them both. A stab of something Lucifer had never felt before punctured his heart as he flayed frantically in the bottomless, black waters for a hand; a knee; a strand of silken hair – anything at all to salvage.

* * *

**Glossary**

_Desinet dicere per enigmata_ : Stop talking in riddles


	13. Lucifer's Crime

**Author's Note:** _Whew! The majority of this one just rolled right out, so I figured I wouldn't keep you lovely folks waiting. Oooohh, I'm so excited to write more! *happydance* :D_

* * *

Water filled Audrey's lungs and trickled from the corner of her slack lips, stealing Gabriel's attention from the sketch in his hand. She lay with her head in the crook of his elbow, and her shoulders nestled into his lap as he sat upon the wooden floorboards of the chamber opposite Jenny's.

Panic flooded him with adrenaline as he flipped her over, expelling the fluid from her airway. She coughed and retched as she came to, gasping in a frenzy to repay the debt of oxygen to her body.

"_Audrey,_" he breathed anxiously, scrambling to manoeuvre her so that she leaned over his knee, her forehead resting against the palm of his hand.

When her chest was drained if its obstruction, Gabriel lifted her into his embrace, securing her cheek firmly against his collarbone as a wave of dizziness overcame her. She grasped tightly at the soft, familiar cotton of his tunic and fought to synchronise her hysterical breaths with his slower, though admittedly still elevated example.

"I thought you'd... gone for good," she managed, swallowing between wheezes in an attempt to pace herself.

"I've made many horrific mistakes," he answered, his arms an unyielding shelter of safety, "but that will _never_ be one of them."

Gabriel kept her fixed to his chest as her breathing slowly moderated and the spots dancing across her vision disappeared.

"What on Earth –" he began, but his mind made the jump before his mouth had even finished posing the question; "Lucifer." The growl escaped him like smoke from the fire of fury that suddenly roared within him.

He pulled her back by her shoulders to look at her and she winced. Instead, he slid his arms around her back, glancing down in confusion at her upper arms. They were blemished by a set of purpling finger marks on either side. A muscle twitched in Gabriel's jaw as he regarded them, before his glare fell upon her frightened face and softened in sympathy.

"You summoned him into your mind." It wasn't a question. "Do you have any _idea_ how lucky you are to be alive?"

He raised both his hands and swept her hair back over her ears, then returned to stroke soft trails over her forehead, cheeks, nose, ears and lips.

"I just wanted to talk to him," she reasoned quietly, closing her eyes beneath his tender touches.

"He could have killed you," Gabriel chided, sternly, but not unkind.

"I didn't know."

Audrey captured his fingers as they mapped out her features and pressed her lips to each of the tips. He watched, mesmerised, and widened his knees as she rose to her own. Placing his hands over the corners of her jaw, she leaned across to his now equal height and revered his full, parted lips with a kiss. He saw it coming this time, and responded with an enthusiasm she hadn't anticipated.

Gabriel's fingertips brushed over the silky-smooth skin behind her ears as he returned the gentleness she'd shown him thus far, before tracing her lower lip with his tongue. _Fast learner,_ Audrey thought with a small, wry smile against his eager mouth as she deepened the kiss. She could still taste the salty tang of seawater, which wasn't unpleasant in combination with the hints of citrus beneath it – presumably from one of the oranges they had brought back from the store – and a sweet, unique warmth that was all his own.

Moving her hands from his, she let them sink to rest her fingers atop his thighs: an unconscious attempt to steady herself as the innocence of his fervour drew her body in closer, melding her against the flat, firm planes of his torso. He ran his touch delicately down her neck, earning him a shivering whisper of appreciation upon his keen lips.

"_Amor,_" Gabriel sighed, feeling the quickening of her pulse under his fingertips.

She retreated abruptly and he followed a little, somewhat dazedly, before looking up at her in confusion. Her expression was a mild mix of shock and fear, and his first thought was that perhaps he should have held onto his confession a bit longer.

"That's... what Lucifer called me," she explicated.

A deep furrow appeared between Gabriel's brows as he kneeled up, and a dizzying rush surged through Audrey's veins as something brushed close against her, making it difficult to think clearly.

"Why would Lucifer call you..." he wondered aloud, oblivious to her thorough lack of attention; "Love... This has something to do with the prophecy," he construed.

"_The key approaches in the form of love,_" she delivered absently, "_and its nurturers shall be rewarded._" When she saw his stunned gape, she shrugged and added, "He told me it."

"He _told_ you the prophecy?" Gabriel exclaimed, her surreptitious glance downward eluding his notice.

"I guess he... rightly assumed I'd be too stupid to figure it out?"

Much to her disappointment, he sank back down to his heels, frowning in concentration.

"_The key approaches in the form of love,_" he repeated; "_The key..._ If that means what it seems to, maybe I was wrong..." Audrey watched him speculate: _Maybe he does want her dead,_ he worried. _But why wouldn't he have done it already? And if the prophecies aren't coming from Hell, then where _are_ they coming from?_

His contemplation allowed Audrey silence enough to try to pick up where they left off, and she began to trail her fingertips along the tops of his thighs, but that notion was immediately cut off by a light knock at the door. She dropped her head back in exasperation before turning to sit between his knees with her back to him, partly in the hope that the intruder would be none the wiser, but mostly just to be close to him again.

As the door swung open, the first thing through it was a set of four heavy paws and an affectionate tongue that bounded straight for Audrey's cheek. She laughed and wrapped her arms around Samson's huge, sandy shoulders in a hug to stop him slobbering on her further. He looked up at Gabriel indifferently, who reached slowly to pet his head, but drew his hand back again when Samson gave a short grumble that clearly said, _Don't even think about it._

Jenny and Eli followed him in with sheepish grins over their familiar's unceremonious greeting, and went to sit side-by-side on the floor with Audrey and Gabriel.

"Morning," Jenny smiled, leaning against Eli as his arm came around her shoulders; "Did you sleep well?" Her question was for Audrey, who hesitated in her response.

"Waking up was better," she skirted carefully.

"I'll bet," Jenny agreed and nodded towards Gabriel; "This one's been watching over you all night, I see." The archangel gave her a sardonic smile as he rubbed his tired eyes. "He got back a little after nightfall, not long after you went to sleep. He was so worried he'd really upset you."

Almost as a confirmation of her words, Gabriel pressed a kiss to the top of Audrey's head, earning him approving smiles all round – save for Samson, of course, who blinked uninterestedly and laid his warm chin across Audrey's knee.

Jenny noticed her sketch, forgotten on the floor, and reached to pick it up. One corner lay in the puddle of seawater, which she paused over in bewilderment.

"Long story," Audrey began. She recounted her dream aloud, to which Gabriel listened intently, too, if a little enviously that she'd called upon Lucifer and not him.

By the time she reached Lucifer's question, however, it became painfully apparent why she'd done so. He wrapped his arms around her, ashamed at his part in the images that haunted her. _I led the army of Heaven against her,_ he tormented himself. _I might as well have done the deeds myself._

As Audrey omitted the part about Gabriel's sensitivity to the coals and told of Lucifer's temper, he raised his hands to cover the bruises on her arms, warming them with his gift of healing. It calmed her significantly, enabling her to conclude with the story's terrifying ending. Jenny and Eli stared in horror at the puddle on the floor.

"Before I started blaming myself, though, he seemed quite content just to hug me while I cried. He's not as bad as I expected."

"Don't be fooled," Gabriel warned, but Audrey turned to look over her shoulder at him.

"You weren't there," she defended, a little tersely. "He was sympathetic; it was like... he understood, how it feels to be categorised as bad... as if he knew from personal experience." Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, but she cut across him. "And when he kidnapped me, he told me that he didn't _fall_ from grace... that he was pushed."

Sorrow marred Gabriel's features as he recalled the day Lucifer was condemned, two millennia ago.

"Lucifer was punished justly for his crimes," he affirmed, as much for his own sake as hers.

"What if you're wrong?" Audrey challenged quietly. The room was silent as he wavered slightly, remembering how the coals hadn't burned his brother.

"There's no way we could be," he replied uncertainly. "I saw it myself."

"What did he do?" The question came from Eli this time, who ran his fingers absently through Jenny's chestnut hair as his wrist rested on her opposite shoulder.

"He accepted power from Satan – the darkness that attacked you –" Gabriel explained to Audrey, touching her face, "and with it, he sought to overthrow the Lord."

"And what did he have to say in his defence?" Audrey asked.

Gabriel stared at her, utterly caught off guard. The hasty way he averted his gaze said it all.

"You can't be serious," Audrey admonished. "God damned him to Hell and never even gave him a chance to _explain himself?_"

Anger fizzed in her chest, not over the injustice of Lucifer's sentence, but the sting of betrayal: that the God so many put their faith and trust in could be so cold and still call Himself merciful.

"There was no..." _...need,_ Gabriel finished in his head, taking heed of the flicker of fire in her eyes, "It wasn't my decision. I admit it never even occurred to me that he could be innocent after watching him do it myself, but the Lord was so heartbroken... Lucifer was one of us – His five beloved archangels; my _brother._ Nothing could have stopped God's verdict."

For the first time, Audrey saw precisely what Lucifer meant to Gabriel, and how what happened had hurt him; he'd obviously had to tell God what he saw, therefore he'd essentially been the one to send him to his fate. _He might put on a show of contempt for God's sake,_ she thought, _but they're still brothers, no matter what._ In the wake of her own loss, her heart ached for him, and she reached out to slot her fingers between his.

"I still think there's more to this than meets the eye," she confessed, running her thumb over his. "There's a lot of angel still left in him."

Jenny and Eli looked on as he surveyed her face, a pensive look upon his own as he fought to decide how he felt about her opinion. _Observant or naïve?_ He wondered to himself, weighing up the arguments. _The coals don't burn him; he kept the Apocalypse victims' souls safe until they were accepted into the Lord's kingdom; his crime was uncharacteristic and we didn't give him a chance to put forth his reasons; he always sends fragments of Light back to Heaven; for some reason, she seems to trust him, despite how he's treated her thus far... that's got to count for something._

Everyone in Heaven, he knew, believed that Lucifer sent back the occasional good piece of a soul because it hurt him just to look at it – that it was somehow damaging to such a monstrous creature. Gabriel could honestly say he'd never believed that, though he couldn't say exactly why.

He thought about the prophecy; _the key approaches in the form of love,_ he recited in his head, looking down at the sketch Jenny had set in front of her to dry. Even upside down, he could make out the countless keys hanging from the tree's curtain of swaying branches. _Regardless of its true meaning, Lucifer would assume 'the key' means the answer. He's afraid. It's all starting to make sense now,_ he realised; _He's been hassling Audrey because he thinks she's the 'love' it speaks of – the object of my love – but he can't bring himself to do anything about it: she's right. There's a lot of angel still left in him._

Finally coming to a decision, he slid his fingers from between hers and wrapped his arms around her from behind again, resting his lips upon her glowing, tawny head. She shone brighter now than ever before, and he took it as encouragement.

"What are you doing?" she asked softly, looking down at his arms as she raised her hands to cover them.

"Praying," he answered. Audrey sighed in resignation.

_Lord, please send to me the remainder of my brothers, your devoted Archangels. I am in need of their assistance._


	14. The Sons of God

Pulling Audrey up with him, Gabriel got to his feet and signalled to the door as he moved them towards it. Jenny and Eli followed suit.

"Where are we going?" Audrey asked, taking his hand as they exited the little left chamber and headed down the steps of the chancel.

"Outside," was all he gave her, striding swiftly down the kaleidoscope-coloured nave while Audrey practically had to jog to keep up.

The refugees scattered among the pews looked up, their eyes following the archangel to the door, where he reached up to unfasten the barricades. Bright light filtered through the growing crack between them until they were bathed in the warmth of the mid-morning sun.

The shadows of the palms lining the pathway stretched directly towards them as Audrey, Jenny and Eli followed Gabriel out into the archway, watching the clear, cerulean skies; for what, they didn't know, until three winged figures appeared from behind a wispy streak of cloud.

Audrey heard Jenny's breath hitch in awe as they drew closer: Michael touched down before them, folding his great, jet wings in unison with his two companions. The one on his left was only slightly shorter than Gabriel, with fiery red hair ruffled to one side that blazed vividly in the desert sunshine. His features were Roman in shape: a strong brow and a straight nose with virtually no bridge, rosy, rounded lips and a charming dash of freckles beneath his sparkling, hazel eyes. The angel on the right had a slightly more chiselled countenance, with wavy, jaw-length hair as black as his ebony wings and a warm, chocolate gaze that was almost as dark.

"Michael," Audrey greeted her previous protector in surprise.

"Exactly how many angels do you know?" Jenny whispered to her, though unable to look away.

"Only the two," she replied with a slightly embarrassed smile as she added, "so far."

The two newcomers offered radiant smiles, and Gabriel moved Audrey forward slightly, with one hand at the small of her back, the other introducing their guests.

"These are our brothers: Raphael," he gestured towards the redhead, then turned to the right: "and Uriel."

The archangels bowed their heads to her respectively, their hands patiently clasped in front of them over their gleaming armour.

Gabriel squared his stance before Michael and let his hands fall to his sides, pain seeping from his sapphire eyes.

"My brother," he whispered, his penitent gaze dropping to the concrete floor.

"Hush, Gabriel," Michael interrupted softly. "You are already forgiven."

Audrey watched the exchange, frowning slightly in confusion, but couldn't help the fond smile that wound its way up her cheeks as Michael reached out and pulled her love into a strong, brotherly embrace that made her heart swell with satisfaction.

Michael pulled away, cupping Gabriel's cheek, and looked at him as only a sibling could.

"_Fratrum amorem non moritur,_" he murmured.

Catching Audrey's eye with an equally warm smile, Raphael repeated his brother's sentiment in English for her.

"Brothers' love never dies."

Her smile widened in understanding: his reference was not only to Gabriel, who straightened up to address all three of them.

"Then you know why I have called upon you?" He supposed, enclosing his fingers around Audrey's.

"_Elatio Divina,_" Michael nodded once. Meaning nothing to Audrey, the foreign words rolled off his tongue, reminiscent of a time long past.

"He believes '_the key_' refers to the solution. He fears his destruction."

"How do you propose we summon him?" Uriel spoke for the first time; his voice was deep and velvety-rich.

When Gabriel paused to think, Audrey seized her chance to join the conversation, having had enough of it flying straight over her head.

"I'll do it." The four archangels regarded her with surprise, but only one commanded her attention.

"It's too dangerous, you discovered that the hard way last time," Gabriel refused.

"I'll have you guys to watch over me though... and am I right in assuming I can call you into my dream in the same way?" Reluctantly, he nodded. "It makes perfect sense, Gabriel. He seems to... trust me, a little. I mean, he's the Devil, why would he have _hugged_ me, otherwise?"

"It would give us an advantage," Michael admitted. Gabriel sighed, lifting his gaze to the skies.

"Alright," he conceded, "but don't linger, do you hear me?" His order left no room for compromise. "Ask him to meet you here, in front of the cathedral, and _get out._ Remember you are in control at all times; you can wake whenever you choose by simply thinking it."

She nodded in accord, and he lowered himself to sit on the steps. Shifting his feet to the bottom one, he levelled out his knees and held his arms out to her. Acutely aware of the three sets of divine eyes upon her back, she sank somewhat self-consciously to sit across his lap, where he cradled her neck and shoulders with one arm and raised his other hand to brush a wispy, errant strand of her hair off her forehead. The last thing she was aware of was his cool fingers running along her brow, then darkness swam before her eyes.

She was vaguely aware that she was looking down – she could see her brown, leather cowboy boots dangling below. Looking up, she realised with a horror-struck, expletive-filled gasp that she was sitting on one of the topmost branches of a tree so tall she could see no discernible base. It was broad enough that she could arch back over it quite comfortably and not fall, but she threw her arms around the rough bark next to her, all rationality lost.

"Lucifer," she called out to the dark, desperate for a pair of stabilising arms. There was no reply or appearance as she looked through the thick forest around her; the trees reminded her of the cathedral's pillars, and their leaves formed a shadowy canopy overhead. "_Lucifer,_" she cried louder, turning slightly to look in the opposite direction.

Her sharp scream rang out through the silence as she almost fell from her treacherous post, upon discovering a familiar thatch of ash blonde hair and a pair of astonishingly vibrant, green eyes beside her, looking just as surprised to find themselves there as Audrey was.

Lucifer's arms shot out to steady her, and she closed her eyes briefly in relief.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, avoiding her eyes.

"For _what?_" Audrey shot back automatically; "Almost killing me last time or just now?"

To her utter disbelief, he looked up at her earnestly.

"Both."

She tried hard not to gape, but it was exceedingly difficult knowing precisely who he was and what he stood for. When she finally managed to respond, he seemed equally as shocked as she had been at his apology:

"It's okay," she dismissed in wonderment; "you failed on both accounts, anyhow."

After a moment of awkwardness, Lucifer peered down between his bare feet.

"Ever the master of lucid dreams, I see," he quipped, sounding more like his normal self. "Can't we ever just talk on solid ground?"

"It's not by choice, _believe_ me," Audrey retorted.

"You're the one in the saddle; just will it and it will be so."

She glanced at him sceptically, before concentrating hard on being closer to the ground. On her unspoken command, the tree began to shrink rapidly in height, eliciting another scream from Audrey as they were sent plummeting towards the hidden forest floor. Lucifer's body pinned her to the wide branch as he clung to it, his cheek pressed against the back of her neck as her hair whipped upward with the speed of the descent.

About a metre short of the ground, it stopped dead, and they were thrown, tumbling, to the damp moss below. Winded by having softened Audrey's landing, Lucifer wheezed beneath her as she clambered to her knees.

"Your methodology... needs a little work," he gasped.

She loomed over him, taking her weight off his torso, and covered her mouth in sheer, giddy relief that she was still alive.

"Shit, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" She worried, dismounting him, and to add to the already fairly lengthy list of things to have surprised her that day, he began to laugh – somewhat disjointedly, between struggling to draw breath, it was a laugh nonetheless.

Reflecting briefly on his sarcastic wisecrack, she eventually joined him, rolling to the spongy earth beside him and resting her head upon his outstretched arm. As he regained the ability to breathe properly, he pushed his hair back off his face with a sigh.

"Alright, seriously now." He turned his face to Audrey, who propped herself up on one elbow to meet his droll gaze. "We need to stop trying to kill one another," he entreated. "Truce?"

She paused, considering, before her snort triggered another bout of helpless laughter. By the time they'd fully recovered, Audrey was using Lucifer's stomach as a pillow, curled up and facing him in the space between his arm and side.

"I wanted to ask you something," she began, "but maybe we should get out of here before a grizzly bear shows up and mauls us." He chuckled in response, and she grinned back, finally certain he was not the Devil he was believed to be. "Meet me in front of the cathedral opposite the store where we met."

Pushing herself up on his chest, she willed herself to wake and hoped fervently that it didn't turn out as disastrously as when she'd willed for solid ground.

Opening her eyes to bright sunlight and a fraught-looking Gabriel watching over her like a hawk, she found herself chortling again. She sat up, pulling on his shoulder for support, and as she did so, he saw that her back was wet and slightly smeared with green, and a dried leaf or two fell from her hair. A stab of irrational jealousy burst through his chest, but he said nothing.

It was Raphael who quirked a heavy brow at her giggling, dishevelled appearance, his smirk carefully restrained in front of his brother.

"We fell from a tree and I squashed him," she explained, her eyes still twinkling with mirth, and Raphael seemed to deem it a worthy justification as he let his amusement show.

Gabriel stood up behind her, and his words instilled a flutter of panic in the pit of her stomach.

"Get ready."

"Get ready for what?" Audrey interrogated as the archangels arranged themselves into an arc, in which she was the centrepoint. "Guys, this isn't an ambush..."

_What was it they said about his destruction?_ Her eyes widened in alarm as she watched a barefoot figure materialise, walking up the pathway towards her. She started forward, her heart thundering in her chest, arms outstretched to protect the Devil, but she'd barely taken two steps when a blinding light, brighter than the sun itself, washed over the entire vicinity.

For the second time that morning, Lucifer fell, winded, as the breath was stolen from his very lungs and his body yielded to the power of his brothers' divinity. Audrey's fingers landed just short of his concrete-grazed wrist, and his heartbroken voice was the last thing she heard before true exhaustion conquered her.

"You tricked me."


	15. The Devil's Advocate

**Author's note:**_ Okay. This one is, admittedly, pretty damn heavy, almost all the way through, but it's the last major bust-up of the story. It only gets sweeter after this, promise._

* * *

Audrey awoke to a white, octagonal, marble ceiling, its beams sprawling from the centre to each of the eight pillars surrounding her. The sound of rain lulled her into a false sense of security before she recalled what had happened and sat upright with a sharp gasp upon the flat, stone altar where she lay in the middle of the gazebo. The first thing she noticed was a pair of bare feet beside hers.

Heart in her mouth, she shifted over to Lucifer's side, pulling an eyelid open with her thumb on his brow; he stirred groggily and blinked, allowing her to sink back and breathe again with her hand over her heart. As she did so, a black tunic came into view, and she followed the broad, muscular frame up to meet Gabriel's watchful, azure eyes with barefaced, unmitigated fury. He stared back, evidently nonplussed over her anger.

"How _could you?_" She barely managed to whisper.

"I don't understand," he replied quietly; "I thought this was what you wanted?" Audrey squinted at him, incredulous.

"You didn't even _warn_ me," she scolded, her voice flattened under her effort to keep it even.

Lucifer's fingers touched her wrist; they were ice cold. She looked down at his pained expression and suspected he was suffering from the same throbbing headache as she.

"You didn't know?" He mumbled, his other arm coming up to shelter his malachite eyes, despite the dullness of the light coming through the open sides of the structure.

"Of course not," Audrey assured him, a little hurt. "What reason would I have to lure you into a trap? Stints of hostility aside – because I'm pretty sure that was actually nothing to do with me – you've been kind to me. You've protected me just as fiercely as your brothers; you listened when I needed somebody to talk to; _that's_ why I asked you to meet me," she clarified, raking his white-blonde hair aside with her fingers. "I don't see the evil in you everyone talks about. I wanted to ask you why you did it – to give you the chance you never got to explain yourself, for everyone to hear."

"And that's exactly what we've done," Michael chimed in from her other side.

"No," she retorted scathingly; "What you've done is made a difficult situation worse." She turned back to Gabriel, her vehemence waning to an irritable, motherly reprimand: "The fact that you _have_ the ability to bend others to your will _does not_ mean you should use it at every given opportunity."

She watched the understanding bleed into his sorry, blue eyes as he regarded the passionate flux of her corona, convulsing with unmatchable radiance; he knew she was right. _We didn't even try to speak to him,_ he realised; _we just assumed he'd attack._

"I should have trusted you," he acknowledged. Turning to Lucifer, he extended his hand to help him up. "I'm sorry," he beseeched.

Lucifer sneered in disdain and began to push himself up without aid, but at Audrey's covert touch to his elbow, hidden from Gabriel's line of sight, he took his brother's hand and allowed it to pull him into a sitting position.

"Where have you brought us?" Audrey asked, changing the subject to prevent further disaster.

The answer came from behind, in the medium of a gentle, honey-smooth, male voice that she recognised at once, despite it being the first time she'd ever heard it. It was the hush of the wind and the ebbing of the tide and the calming patter of the rain beyond the marble columns of the rotunda.

"You're in the garden of Eden, child," it soothed melodically, and Audrey twisted to meet her maker.

He was every bit as holy as he'd ever been depicted, though in a strange, terrestrial way that indicated righteousness, rather than self-righteousness. He looked nothing like the old man Michelangelo painted, but in fact, approximately in his mid-thirties. His sandy hair was about the same length as Uriel's, but much thicker than the archangel's sleek locks; it was streaked only very slightly with grey at his temples, and it was well hidden because of his neutral colour. The lines at the corners of his bronze, fatherly eyes were more of character than age, and he was clean-shaven save for the light stubble around his jaw and across his upper lip.

He wore a thin, greyish-mauve kurta that came to the tops of his thighs, with leafy flourishes of silver embroidery around the open, buttoned neckline and the sleeves pushed up to reveal his forearms, which were smattered with blonde hairs like fields of bowing wheat. From what Audrey could see of his trousers beneath it, they were supple leather like those of his sons' uniforms.

There was no smile upon his young face, but the corners of his mouth had a natural upward tilt that lent a peacefulness to the still somewhat tense situation.

At first, Audrey found herself unable to meet his dark amber gaze, feeling very much like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, until she remembered exactly who was at fault, and locked her eyes defiantly on his. She was rewarded with a small smirk, as though he could see directly into her mind, and he looked pointedly down at where her fingers still rested on Lucifer's elbow. She deliberately stretched her arm out across his back in answer, staring him down. _You will not intimidate me,_ she vowed.

Overall, she wasn't entirely sure how to feel. He conveyed himself as humble and wise in his authority, like one of those really brilliant sort of teachers who wait with a patient smile while a disruptive student vents, before slamming down a detention slip in front of them. Her challenging stare didn't seem to anger him in the way it had used to do to her mother, and after measuring her up, he seemed to approve.

"I can see why Gabriel loves you so," he observed, his smirk finally stretching into a beatific smile. "You remind me of someone very dear to my heart."

A sharp gasp came from the other end of the square, stone table, where Audrey found Gabriel gazing at her as though truly seeing her for the first time. She frowned in confusion and mild irritation over the cryptic conversation once again flying high over her head. Turning back to God, she calmly but viciously lashed him with the brunt of her wrath.

"Good thing your assassins didn't succeed in my case then, huh?"

His eyes immediately dropped, unmistakably contrite, and she took no notice of Gabriel's hiss of a reproach.

"No, my son; she has every right to feel angry and hurt," he rebuffed, and when he looked back up at Audrey, his deep ochre eyes were full of tears; "but we shall discuss that matter in due course. I believe we were about to decide on a time for Lucifer's trial tomorrow." Audrey was taken aback, having expected him to put up a fight where his 'fallen' son was concerned, but he continued without missing a beat: "I think noon will do, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and stepped through a gap in the balustrade connecting the pillars, out into the torrential rain that thrashed the cherry and magnolia trees, sending blizzards of tiny, pink petals flurrying to the ground. As he walked away, his hair and clothes already dripping, Audrey scrambled down from the altar to run after him, her mind buzzing with far too many questions to let him escape so easily. Upon reaching the threshold of the large gazebo, however, she hit an invisible wall.

Rebounding, unhurt, she cautiously pressed her hands up against it; it was like the indiscernible bubble between the identical poles of two magnets. She focused on the dull purple figure in the distance as God disappeared across an ornate, metal bridge over a rushing river, and disappeared into the shadows of the thick, green forest beyond.

Audrey's hands unconsciously balled into fists as her head whipped round to meet Gabriel's hangdog expression.

"Humans were banished from Eden for a reason," he murmured, barely audible over the rain.

"So I'm a prisoner now?" Audrey whispered back, her fury giving way to crushing heartbreak.

"_Hell_ is a prison," Lucifer corrected her dryly; "This is more of a waiting room. A playpen, if you will, for those of us who can't be trusted to roam freely."

"_Tace!_" Gabriel hissed at his brother, who quirked a brow and mock-zipped his mouth.

"It's only until morning," Michael offered placidly; "The Lord wishes to speak with the archangels, leaving nobody to accompany you."

Audrey wasn't listening, not that it would have pacified her in any way had she been able to. Her eyes searched Gabriel's face for some sign of resentment on her behalf, but all she saw was resignation in those tired, oceanic eyes.

"It's not my decision," he reasoned further.

"Then _fight!_" Audrey flung back at him. "_Persuade_ him, instead of leaving me here like a _criminal!_" Gabriel took a breath but she gave him no room: "_This_ is where you went wrong before," she accused; "You were too _cowardly_ to do what's right." A thin trickle of saltwater skimmed his cashmere cheek, a little slower than those upon her own. "_That's_ what sets Michael apart from you."

Her chest heaved with venom and pain as she watched his heart crumble before her eyes; he made to move around the table towards her, but she stepped in the opposite direction.

"You know what, don't bother," she twisted the knife one last time. "I'd rather stay here with Lucifer anyway."

She couldn't look at the poor, broken angel any longer. Fixing her tear-blinded eyes on the veil of water attacking the landscape outside, she was aware of his departure in her peripheral vision. Michael paused to regard her a moment longer, before following him out into the downpour, leaving her alone with Lucifer and the silence.

Turning her back to the altar, she sank to its base and lowered her head to her knees, letting go. A pair of large, cold hands reached under her arms and Lucifer pulled her up into his embrace, combing her silky hair with his fingers.

"That's what you get for defending the Devil," he chastised gently in her ear as she wept against his chilly, bare chest for all she was worth, "you silly, inconceivably brave little girl." _She cries harder for him than she did for her parents,_ he noted with pity.

"I should have cut my tongue out years ago," she sobbed.

* * *

**Glossary**

_Tace_ : Hold thy peace


	16. Reunions & Realignments

Lucifer held Audrey faithfully as the day slipped by and the rain gradually relented, almost synchronised with her tears. When sunset came, she was already fast asleep in the cradle of his arms, having finally succumbed to exhaustion. Her torment continued, however; he could tell by the slight creases between her brows and the restless way she fidgeted. Lucifer wished fervently that she'd summon him into her mind again, but her unease indicated she was trapped in the dark depths of a terrible nightmare, and to call upon someone required a solid state of awareness.

Instead, he did what he could to soothe her from the outside, hushing and smoothing away her anxious expressions as night fell and crept into the early hours of the morning. He couldn't bring himself to wake her after the boundless hurt she'd displayed, and he supposed reality wouldn't be much better for her anyway. Especially, he suspected, when Gabriel emerged from the darkness and stepped up onto the gazebo with a herringbone-patterned, woollen blanket draped over his arm.

He'd never seen his brother so despondent as he perched on the edge of the platform and unfolded the blanket. To his surprise, he flung it out over Lucifer's head to wrap around them both, rather than just tucking it in around Audrey. A little discomfited by the gesture, he kept his watch fixed upon the sleeping girl in his arms, and it seemed that Gabriel favoured the same idea.

_I should be happy,_ Lucifer sighed mentally. _If she's the key because of Gabriel's love for her, I should feel relieved over this._ A small, hoarse whimper emanated from Audrey's throat and his instinctive reflexes had him rocking her gently and caressing her face before he was even aware of it. He didn't dare look up at Gabriel as he calmed her distress, feeling the heat of his moonlit tears right through the cold, night air between them.

"She loves you, regardless," he assured his brother, unsure as to why, in a whisper no louder than the breeze among the trees. _Perhaps because I love _her_,_ he realised secretly, gazing down at Audrey as he would a sister. "She wouldn't have wept for an entire day if she didn't."

Gabriel remained silent for a long time, watching as Lucifer ran his palm tenderly over his advocate's hairline. The tiny bulges of her corneas slid around under her eyelids as she dreamt.

"I don't know why," he whispered back finally; "I've given her nothing but reasons to hate me."

Lucifer gave a quiet huff of a snort, careful not to disturb their beloved, and looked up at him.

"Come now, Gabriel," he smiled wryly; "she somehow managed to see the better side of _me_, did she not?" A similarly dry humour warmed his brother's eyes a little. "I've never met anyone so compassionate. She doesn't take things at face value; she makes her own decisions, and she's decided you're a good man." The archangel reached out to skim the backs of his fingers along her wrist with a gentle sigh, and as he reached her knuckles, her hand twitched slightly before it stretched out, seeking his familiar touch. She nestled her palm against his, gripping his fingers tightly, and he stared with sorrowful adoration. "She isn't biased by your guilt," Lucifer identified.

Gabriel raised his sapphire eyes to meet his brother's emeralds, just as the sky watches over the land and endeavours to protect it from the beautiful, star-strewn vacuum beyond. The darkness that had maintained a vignette around his view of Lucifer, since he'd seen him bargain with Evil, dissolved into the silver glow of the moon above, and he saw his brother beneath the Devil's mask for the first time in two millennia.

"If she believes in the best of you, then so do I," he pledged, reaching his unoccupied hand out to rest upon Lucifer's blanket-swathed shoulder.

A tentative smile tugged at the exiled brother's lips as he returned his attention to Audrey, though his care wasn't really needed any longer. Her face was relaxed and her breathing even, Gabriel's presence chasing any troubles away. As the moonlight began to fade, overpowered by the sun's first glimmer across the garden, Gabriel looked up at the horizon, just visible through the trees, and smiled too.

Deep, golden light filtered low through the magnolia buds and the dew-laden grass, like the amber eyes of God himself. The dawn brought with it a plethora of life: rabbits and deer ventured boldly out from their shelters among the trees, grazing on the lush greenery in the rising sun; otters slid into the river, chasing and splashing one another playfully between the reeds under the bridge; skylarks hovered overhead, gracing Eden with their chorus of song: the first sounds of the day.

Lucifer's tears of relief dripped upon Audrey's face as he watched the majestic garden come to life before his eyes after being parted from it for so long. She stirred with a deep sigh, and her brows knitted together in confusion as she wiped away the droplets on her cheek. Squinting up in the bright, morning light, she discovered the source of the leak and began to push herself up; it was only as she did so that she realised one of her hands was held captive.

She blinked at Gabriel sleepily, uncertain of what to say as she recalled the events of the morning before, but she didn't pull away. Her love didn't seem to have noticed she'd awoken anyway; his gaze was following something on the ground at the entrance to the marble rotunda, hidden from her view by the edge of the altar.

He slipped his fingers from around her hand and got up, watching the gap in the balustrade all the while. Slowly moving towards it, he braced himself with one hand on the wide banister and bent down, until only the back of his head and the top arcs of his wings were visible. When he stood up again and turned towards her, he was holding a small, prickly ball in his cupped hands. It shivered slightly as he came to sit back down, and he handed it over to Lucifer, who stared, enraptured.

A tiny, brown nose poked out from under his thumb, and he raised it to reveal a pair of black, beady eyes surrounded by light, beige fur.

"Hello, old friend," he half laughed quietly, his tears streaming rapidly down his stubbled cheeks as he manoeuvred himself around Audrey to give her a better view.

He turned the brave little creature on its back and it rested in his palm with its nose and paws facing up at him as he stroked its tummy with one forefinger. The hedgehog sniffed at it and reached out its tiny arms to grab on.

Enamoured, Audrey turned to grin at Gabriel, but he was gone. The sun was almost fully risen now, and she could just see his winged back disappearing into the forest.

"He'll be back," Lucifer comforted, noticing her disappointment, and attempted to distract her in the meantime. "Do you like animals?"

She couldn't help but smile as she nodded, turning back to the bundle of needles in his hands. Grinning at her answer, he passed the hedgehog to her and climbed down off the platform. As he approached the entrance, more wildlife began to appear around them; one of the deer looked up at him from a few trees away, and began padding towards him. A couple of brown rabbits hopped around the outside of the balustrade until they reached the gap, where Lucifer bent to meet them as they leapt up onto the stone. Picking them up one by one, he set them down on the table where Audrey sat, cross-legged, nuzzling her new friend against her cheek.

By the time Lucifer was done, she was accompanied by a doe, two rabbits, a frog, a dormouse and a couple of otters. The gazebo had become a menagerie as he reunited with the inhabitants of his old home, talking to them as though they were human, and Audrey introduced herself to each of them accordingly.

As the hours passed, she grew especially fond of the white-speckled doe, who possessed a certain mocking humour when she looked at Lucifer, like a sister would roll her eyes at a younger brother's silly faces. She found herself developing a sort of kinship with the deer, and leaned her arm along the top of her back as they shared private smiles over his soft side.

Lucifer was sat on the corner of the altar, one of the rabbits nestled into the crook of his elbow, when, out of nowhere, a small, pulsing dot of green light shot in over the balustrade and stopped dead between them, hovering in the air like a firefly, though it would take hundreds of them to burn as brightly as the little, apple-green star. It zoomed around Lucifer's head, then circled Audrey somewhat leisurely in contrast, before darting back off into the garden and disappearing over the trees.

"What was _that?_" Audrey gaped, unable to tear her eyes from the spot where it had vanished, and the animals seemed just as captivated. It was quite certainly one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

"A soul," her companion replied in an equally awed whisper.

He, too, stared long after the tiny light had gone, with the same strange, haunted look Gabriel had worn when he'd seen Jenny's sketch of the tree. She never got time to think any more about it, however, as she noticed something moving in the distance.

The sun was almost at its highest point and Gabriel beat his obsidian wings over the bridge, soaring towards them. It was time.

As he landed about a metre short of the gazebo and made his way towards them, Audrey was sure she could see a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth at the sight of all the animals. The doe lifted her slender neck to look up at her with her glittering black eyes, as though imbuing her with confidence for what lay ahead. After leaning over to kiss between her eyes, Audrey wrapped the abandoned blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, got up and joined Lucifer by the entrance, waiting to be released.

The tension rolled off him in tangible waves; his fingers splayed and contracted in a nervous, continuous pattern by his sides. She threaded her own between his to stop them and gave them a gentle, encouraging squeeze.

Gabriel stopped with his toes to the marble step and extended a hand to each of them. The barrier was still there – she could feel the static running over her skin like slowly submerging herself in water as his hand guided her through it. Once they were free, he let go of his brother and silently moved to Audrey's side as they set off across the grass.

The narrow, elaborately-wrought bridge was only wide enough for one, and Gabriel stepped up to take the lead. He grasped her hand loosely, as if he expected her to pull away at any moment and had no intention of stopping her. Irritated that he seemed to have learned nothing from her words the day before, she tightened her grip. She could tell he'd noticed the change by the way his brow relaxed a little, and guilt redoubled over her heart. _I'd be the same, where he's concerned,_ she realised.

She couldn't believe she'd fallen so hard in four and a half days, but to her it just made it that much more real. She'd never been in love before, despite her numerous ex-boyfriends and countless liaisons, because she'd never trusted anyone enough to let them get that close. Her parents had always fought so often that she'd developed a severe lack of faith in love from a very early age. Now, in under a week, her life had changed so radically; _she_ had changed. She'd used to value silly things like popularity, though she'd never have admitted it, and she'd always demanded respect from people but had never really earned it. She looked back on her former self and the archangel's hand she held onto made it feel like years ago.

She'd never known it could be so strong; the compulsion to be near him and make him happy was overwhelming. Since that first meal they'd shared, when he'd returned to her as nobody else ever had, and dismissed her tainted past as inconsequential, even though he was undoubtedly more aware of the weight of sin than anyone she'd ever encountered, she'd known. There'd been no stopping the crumbling of her shields once she'd dared to hope, and his promise had been their final ruin.

A squeeze to her other hand halted her reverie as they journeyed through the towering, verdant forest. She glanced up at Lucifer, whose eyes flickered across towards Gabriel and back down at her.

The irony wasn't lost on her; _the Devil is encouraging me to apologise,_ she thought with a wry smile that she had to bow her head to hide. _He's right though._

"I'm sorry," she professed, looking up at her love as he held some ferns aside for them to pass.

He fell back into line with them on the other side and regarded her with a heart-piercingly blank expression.

"You've nothing to be sorry for," he replied.

"I knew it would hurt you and I said it anyway."

"You never said anything untrue."

Audrey blanched; with nothing left to say, and no real comfort in return, she allowed herself to be led on in silence. Her eyes stung as she worried she'd pushed him too far this time, and the skyscraping trees began to thin out without her notice.

It was, therefore, easy for Lucifer to surreptitiously snag his brother's attention, too, giving him the same pointer as he had to Audrey. Gabriel looked down as a hot, anxious tear rolled down her cheek, her gaze fixed, unseeing, on the ground a few steps ahead.

He stopped her among the bluebells at the edge of the forest, and Lucifer leaned against a tree as he beheld the view beyond the forest, trying to make himself scarce with a smug, internal grin.

"Audrey, I mean it," Gabriel implored, brushing her tear away with his thumb as he took her face in his hands; "Never be sorry for telling me the truth. I beg that you do, always." He was close enough that his gaze skipped between her aquamarine eyes, but still too far for Audrey's preference.

She stepped forward in relief to wrap her arms around his middle, and with her ear pressed to his beating chest, she felt balanced again.

Her vision settled upon the assembly ahead, and the balance was gone.


	17. The Trial

**Author's note:**_ HOOO, BOY. This one was SO FUN to write! :D It's a long one, as it's one of the most important chapters of the entire story, but it's only the beginning of the unravelling of the mystery!_

* * *

Reminiscent of the walk from the diner to the car when Audrey had made her getaway with Charlie and Jeep, a path was outlined before them with hundreds upon thousands of angels on either side, their wings varying in a gradient of shades between the dark grey that bordered the route to the vast sea of white beyond, and their gleaming, unearthly eyes followed them as they continued on their way.

Even with Gabriel's arm around her back and Lucifer's around her shoulders, all she could feel was the weight of the crowd's stare upon her. She kept her focus fixed upon the immense coliseum ahead, its layers of open, ivy-covered arches made of the same white marble as the gazebo.

The laddering vines were dotted with flowers, and from Audrey's distance they seemed to envelop the circular structure in a white and lilac haze. Around the circumference, built into the walls like pillars, were five trees – the largest she'd ever seen; easily twice the width of the Arbol del Tule, and reaching taller than the amphitheatre itself. Their branches mingled above it, creating a natural roof for the al fresco building.

As they neared the main archway into the coliseum, Audrey had forgotten all about their audience. They entered a long tunnel that ran under the tiers of seating above, towards the structure's centre at the other end. It was lit by giant, ivory candles set into alcoves in the smooth, marble walls, each of which had a ring of nine wicks, burning brightly and sending droplets of wax trickling down already-set trails.

"_Palatio Angelorum,_" Gabriel murmured in her ear when they stepped out into the leaf-dappled light of the structure's core; "The Palace of the Angels."

The trees' branches overhead stretched just far enough to leave a hole in the centre of the canopy they created, and beams of radiant sunlight streamed down upon three tall, light-wooden chairs with low backs set out in the middle of the arena facing away from the door. The whole place was empty, but hosts of angels began filtering in from all sides the moment they sat down.

"Is this where you live, then?" Audrey asked Gabriel in response to his translation. _Strange kind of home,_ she thought, looking around, _with no beds, or even rooms..._

"The five trees are mostly hollow; they've long since grown around the floors built into them. There's one for each of the four types of angels, and one for the Lord Himself."

He gestured towards the tree at the back of the building, where four beautifully bizarre creatures emerged on a balcony protruding from a hole in it, surrounding the sombre-looking God of all things. They were humanoid in form – female, though definitely not human: their skin was a vivid, translucent orange, under which their bones tinged it with a lighter shade, and the veins it displayed were lightning-white, as were their cascades of sleek, knee-length hair. They were clothed in iridescent, saffron yellow organza-type fabric that hung in handkerchief folds from their golden collars, with gaps in the sides for free movement of their arms. Layered behind each of them were three sets of wings, glittering like the sun itself.

Audrey raised an arm to shield her eyes from the intensity of the light they emitted, and Gabriel reached out to run his fingertips across her forehead, increasing her tolerance slightly to ease the headache it would eventually have induced. Her hand gradually lowered back to her lap as the glare became easier to endure.

"Seraphim," he whispered, knowing they would be scrutinising him closely from across the arena.

"Weird looking things, aren't they?" She replied conversationally, and Gabriel fought to smother a smirk. "Gorgeous, but weird."

_I've always thought so,_ he secretly agreed.

Turning to her other side, Audrey found Lucifer scratching nervously at his bare chest as his gaze skittered around the amphitheatre. She captured his fingers tightly and looked him straight in the eye.

"Don't be intimidated. There's only one person here who can judge you and he better do it fairly or he'll have me to deal with." She gave him a small, droll smile and let go of his hand to slip her wrist around his elbow and nuzzle his arm with her cheek. "If worse comes to worst, at least then you'll have me to keep you company."

Neither he nor Gabriel could quite see the funny side of her words, but the arrival of another set of angels – eight in total – diverted their attention. They were all male, looking much like the Archangels, except that they were dressed in loose, sky-blue tunics, drawn in at the waist by light, leather belts from which their swords hung, and mid-calf boots of the same taupe material. They each had two sets of tawny, white-flecked wings which were tucked neatly away behind them.

Audrey looked questioningly over at Gabriel, who answered with another whisper:

"Cherubim."

"I thought cherubs were like, little naked, flying babies?" She queried, her brow furrowed slightly in confusion, and this time Gabriel couldn't help the grin that seeped across his face.

"A common misconception," he corrected, looking down at the soft, mossy ground below to try to reign in his amusement. "The creatures you speak of are called Putti, and they're a product of human imagination, not Heaven." Lucifer was quite conspicuously snickering at Audrey's mistake, causing Gabriel to add, "If you value the fact that your head is attached to your shoulders, I'd stop that rather swiftly."

It only made his brother laugh harder, but he at least tried to limit the noise and stifle it with his hand. Gabriel was only just holding on to his own composure by a very thin thread, which threatened dangerously to vanish when Audrey smiled warmly up at the assembly of surly Cherubim in greeting.

The three remaining Archangels were the last to join the congregation, and they took their seats below the balcony, in front of the row of Cherubim. Michael and Uriel's faces were expressionless, saving their verdicts for after Lucifer had spoken, but Raphael's hazel eyes shone with anticipation as he nodded at Audrey. His love for his convicted brother was utterly transparent.

Quiet suddenly fell over the coliseum and Audrey looked up: God had risen from his ornate, golden throne and stood at the stone balustrade, leaning his hands upon it. He wore a white, silk sherwani suit with a gold-embellished collar that left a blank rectangle at the front where his shirt was visible beneath, not unlike that of a priest. The gold embroidery followed the line of the fastened opening down the front, creating an intricate, patterned bib across his chest before dwindling to a lace-like design along the hem. His feet were bare, she could see between the railing-posts, and his crisp, white trousers were bunched slightly around his ankles where they narrowed.

"I trust you have good reason for reopening this old wound, Gabriel," he began, his dark, citrine eyes spelling out his pain even without his weary tone.

"Of course, Father," Gabriel assured, standing up with a determined manner that made Audrey's heart blaze with love. "It has come to my attention that... my previous allegations concerning your beloved son, my brother, Lucifer, may have been wrong." The Lord regarded him indifferently, guarding his heart vigilantly, and waited patiently for him to elaborate. "I told you truthfully what I saw," he continued, "but I have new reason to believe that what I saw was drastically far from what was really happening."

"And what reason might that be?" God propelled his son's address calmly, but his skill at hiding his bias was given away by the nectarine fingers that squeezed his left shoulder in support.

"I was recently forced to enter Satan's fortress," Gabriel explained reluctantly, knowing it would incriminate his brother further, but compelled into honesty by his faith in Audrey's judgement, "and discovered that the Coals of Conscience do not burn him."

The Lord raised an eyebrow, but he couldn't be sure whether it was out of intrigue or rebuke until his next question:

"What could possibly have led you to the ninth Circle of Hell?"

When Gabriel faltered, Lucifer sighed in resignation. There was no way but forward.

"He came to rescue Audrey," he articulated, gesturing toward her, "because I'd kidnapped her."

"And what, may I ask, made this particular young saint so interesting to you?" He spoke directly to Lucifer for the first time in two thousand years, though he looked around at the wall of angelic faces as he did so.

Audrey's brow quirked of its own accord and she took a breath to speak, but as if poised for such a reaction, Gabriel's hands shot out, one to cover her mouth, and the other securing it by cradling the base of her skull.

"Later," he breathed, not moving his lips as his brother justified himself before God.

"I thought that the prophecies came from you," he explained, "and that I faced my destruction. I acted out of fear."

"I see," God acknowledged stiffly.

"And I totally forgive him for it," Audrey announced, pulling herself free of Gabriel's grip.

The Lord looked at her evenly, considering her words carefully. Two of his Seraphim whispered something to one another behind him, and whatever they said seemed to light his eyes a little.

"Audrey," he addressed her, and she blinked in surprise; "It seems you've decided what kind of a soul Lucifer has – tell me, what is your impression of him?"

She glanced across at Lucifer with an affectionate smile, before returning her gaze to the balcony above.

"My first impression of him wasn't that great," she admitted with a wry grin, "but he proved to be... first merciful, then comforting, and understanding... valiant, compassionate... and he kind of has a knack for making me laugh."

The latter was received with a small smirk from God, and beside her, she heard a quiet snort of amusement as Lucifer no doubt recalled her dream-control 'methodology'. She couldn't help but chuckle and meet his peridot gaze.

"He always was the wittiest of his brothers," the Lord told her, sounding only slightly pained now. "Well, with such a shining report of his behaviour, I'd very much like to hear his reasons."

The entire arena listened with bated breath as the mask known as the Devil stood before his former Father to make what he hoped to be his last speech.

"When Pilate and the Sadducees conspired to have Jesus arrested," he began, looking up at the guarded, amber eyes above, "and we learned of the coming of the Antichrist, Satan came to me and offered to gift me with great power and strength if I agreed to let it contain a fragment of itself inside me." Gasps and whispering erupted all around; clearly, Heaven had known about the power, but had been unaware of the piece of Evil Lucifer had accepted into his heart. "I was naïve, and thought I could trick it into believing I was its servant so that I might wield its terrible power against it, in the hope that it would aid you, Lord, by giving you extra time to save your Holy Incarnation. I _thought,_" he added, somewhat bitterly, "that my Father's love for me was strong enough that I could hold Evil at bay until Jesus had been moved to safety, thus allowing him to teach goodness to the world another day."

An acute ache lanced through Audrey's chest at his words, the betrayal smarting her own heart as savagely as it had Lucifer's. She watched his fingers curl into angry balls, and slid down from her long-legged seat. _That's not going to get you anywhere right now,_ she thought, unravelling his fist to take his hand. She didn't need to look up to know the kind of agony upon God's face; his stunned, shameful silence said it all. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the Archangels, all of whom were blinking through glistening tears. Raphael appeared outright horror-struck at the revelation that his brother had paid so dearly for such a wholly selfless act.

Gabriel got up from his own seat on her right, and moved towards them, but instead of enclosing his fingers around hers, she was surprised to find, he strode to Lucifer's other side and followed her example in a bold display of support. With a jolt of satisfaction, she realised: _He's standing up for what's right._

A harmonious buzz rang out through the arena, like a collection of struck tuning forks, as two of the fiery Seraphim beat their dozen golden wings, lifting the Lord into the air, and swept to the forest-like floor to set him down before them.

"By denying you my love... I _made_ you the prophesied Antichrist," God whispered, realising aloud. "You've been fighting against it inside yourself all this time?"

He stepped closer now, his sparkling, ochre eyes aware of nothing but the two thousand years of agony his beloved son had been forced to endure, all because of his blindness over that dreadful second heartbreak. A tear tracked down his cheek as he raised his hand to Lucifer's torso.

Pulling it back slowly with monumental effort, a sob escaped him as a black, irregular, crackling ball the size of his fist emerged from Lucifer's scarred, heaving chest, and a shrill, inhuman screech permeated the air. God wrenched desperately on it, his face wet and contorted in unfathomable concentration, but his emotions were hindering his efficiency.

Audrey watched with a strange numbness, unable to think or feel – hardly even able to believe what she was seeing. Gabriel stepped forward, and she was vaguely aware of her own body moving to make up the fourth side of the square around the pulsing, shrieking atrocity clinging for all it was worth to Lucifer's heart. Her love's pointed look caught her attention as Michael appeared behind him; Uriel moved quickly around to stand behind Lucifer and a hand on Audrey's shoulder told her Raphael was with her.

_There must be something I can do,_ she fretted, observing the Lord's unimaginable struggle to set his son free of Satan's hold.

"Will it," Lucifer's strained, tortured whisper cut cleanly through the fragment's howl as he tightened his grip on her hand.

In an instant, the coliseum was filled with blinding, cleansing light, growing even brighter as the Seraphim's bodies alit as though it were all they were made of, and the Cherubim encircled them with another layer, before swarms of angels surrounded them, swooping among one another overhead until the branches of the trees were no longer visible.

The dark orb hissed and crackled violently as it began to corrode, as though the light was like acid to its dense, onyx form. It gradually shrunk in size, making it easier for the Lord to tear away, and then it was gone.

Panting in the subsiding haze of divine light, Audrey wavered a little, which Raphael steadied, but to her thorough astonishment, she was still standing.

"I didn't pass out..." she breathed, not really having meant to say it out loud.

"No," Raphael murmured close to her ear, "because you participated."

Reeling, she saw the proud, tearful grin stretch across Gabriel's face before her view was obstructed by Lucifer and his Father's embrace. The Lord finally spoke the words his son had waited two millennia to hear:

"Can you ever forgive me?" He pleaded in a choked whisper.

"More than readily, if you'd just accept me back," Lucifer answered thickly.

God complied by placing his skilled hands over the two large scars upon his son's back, and beneath them, Lucifer felt a sharp twinge that transformed into a pleasant tingle across his shoulders and along his spine as his bones re-grew from his blades. As the skin stretched and the bones slowly lengthened behind him, God's hands were pushed upward, where they rested atop the bases of the new wings. They widened further along and fleshed out, the skin dotted with strange, black follicles that grew long, glossy feathers when the wings were fully formed. His plumage was slightly different to the other archangels, Audrey noticed, in that they had a lustrous, reddish sheen where the sunlight bathed them from above.

When they were done, Lucifer extended them between the throng of bodies to inspect them. He glanced back at his smiling Father in confusion upon noticing the unique pigmentation.

"Red for passion," God clarified, and pointed a finger skyward, where the hole in the canopy of leaves let through wide beams, setting his son's wings alight with colour, "in the honour of Light."

Lucifer folded his beautiful new wings with a wide, gleaming grin, and the Devil was no more.


	18. God's Love

**Author's note:**_ Ermm... *stares at screen in disbelief* So, apparently you guys get two chapters today? I guess this one flooded right out because I've had it planned for a while. Heh. :)_

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Lucifer was ecstatic to be an archangel once more, but he still felt as though something was missing. As his fingers rose unconsciously to his throat, he realised what that something was. The Lord's knowing, amber eyes followed his son's touch, before falling upon Lucifer's tall, dark brother on his right.

A loud, metallic clunk reverberated around the silent arena as Gabriel's hefty collar unfastened at his nape and fell heavily into his hands as they came up in surprise to catch it. His face was suddenly flooded with panic as he regarded his Creator. _He's going to give him mine,_ he worried, horrified, _because I relayed what I saw before I knew all the details!_

"_Father, no! Please!_" He begged, but was prevented from dropping to his knees by the warm, forceful hand on his arm.

"Calm yourself, Gabriel," God soothed; Michael gasped over his brother's shoulder and caught his own collar as it came free, too. "I release you both not out of dissatisfaction, but because you've made me realise that your friendship is far more valuable to me than your service. The three of you," he gestured to Lucifer as he spoke, "have my complete trust, therefore you no longer need these bindings."

Taking the collars from both his sons' hands and dissolving them into nothing between one blink and the next, he grinned delightedly at their bewildered faces.

"My Lord?" Gabriel managed, but was halted by a raised palm.

"Iehovah, if you will."

An astounded smile wound slowly up Gabriel's pillowy cheeks until it matched that of the grateful Creator, Iehovah.

"You... trust _me?_" Lucifer's dumbstruck whisper came, and Iehovah turned to the restored archangel, taking his face in his hands.

"Your error was human in nature, but your motives were truly angelic. I owe you a great debt for protecting the Worlds from the Antichrist; had it been anybody else, I fear it might have won."

Audrey's brain was still snagged on Iehovah's first sentence. _Your error was human in nature._ Fury bubbled in her chest as her heart beat faster, flushing her cheeks with anger. He let go of Lucifer and turned to face her even before she spoke a word, because the effervescent crackling that filled the air around them like a showering firework was emanating from her. The normally invisible corona surrounding her dark-honey hair pulsated with a vivacious, violent noise similar to that which the fragment of Satan had emitted.

"Mm," Iehovah hummed in acknowledgement, "I thought I still sensed some darkness here."

"_Excuse_ me?" Audrey whispered dangerously, heedless to the frantic look upon Gabriel's face behind him.

"Though it is very faint," he added politely, "despite appearances."

She took a step towards him, barely able to breathe for the concentration it took to keep her rage in check. Iehovah recognised this and stayed still and quiet, waiting out the misguided reprimand. The return of his son had imbued him with a great deal more patience than he'd possessed of late, and he held out an arm to stop Gabriel from interrupting her when he moved forward.

"Have you ever heard of the saying, 'ignorance is bliss'?" Audrey asked rhetorically, her fingers clenching into fists as she regarded his apparent lack of concern. "It must be _so easy_ for your angels – all of them – to have such _faith_ in you; to follow you so blindly. Because _they_ don't know what _humans_ know, do they? They never ate the damn fucking fruit." Iehovah maintained his calm, and Gabriel covered his mouth in consternation over the thin ice his love was treading. "Besides Lucifer, angels know _nothing_ of abandonment, or hopelessness. They can't understand that we keep fighting in the face of inevitability simply because there's nothing else to live for. We might have defied you, but we only hurt ourselves in doing so. The punishment of that knowledge would have been more than enough, without condemning us. Because the world I know is far more similar to Hell than it is to Heaven."

Iehovah stared at her wearily all the while, and when she finished, he let out a great sigh and stepped towards her.

"Dear child," he murmured, but she cut across him.

"_DON'T PATRONIZE ME!_" She roared, her voice echoing around the circular structure.

Iehovah's tuscan eyes hardened to bronze as he came to the end of his tether.

"Think, Audrey," he snapped. "Behold our wonderful little family reunion." He spun around for effect, gesturing towards the crowd of angels he called his sons. "What's the glaringly obvious missing component?"

Audrey glanced around at the assembly, perplexed. Raphael had moved round to stand behind Lucifer with Uriel; his cheek was pressed against his returned brother's shoulder in relief over his homecoming, and his fingers gripped the crook of his elbow. Uriel's hand sat atop Lucifer's other shoulder, while Michael's arms were around Gabriel's waist, continuing the restraint Iehovah had forgotten in his irritation. They supported one another in small ways that weren't always noticeable or conscious, like the Lost Boys of Neverland.

"A mother?" She suggested, her brow furrowed.

In answer, God raised both his hands to the lush shelter above and down through the hole in the centre he drew two tiny, white grains of glimmering light. They came to rest in each of his palms, before he thrust them forward, sending them flying across the gap towards her. Audrey raised her arms in alarm as a shield, taken aback, but she found they'd merely attached themselves to her own hands. Pulling them up in front of her, she gasped as two familiar figures swam before her prickling eyes.

"Mom?" She breathed, barely audible as the ghostly image of her mother smiled wistfully at her. She took her father's hand, looking up at his uninjured neck beneath the collar of his favourite spring-green shirt. "_Daddy,_" she choked, remembering him as he'd been before the madness. He reached out to touch her face, but she felt nothing. "Why can't I feel them?" She asked, fraught with grief. "Why can't they talk?"

"Because they're dead," Iehovah replied flatly, "just as my beloved Wife." Audrey looked up at him, her amazonite eyes full of hot tears as he stepped forward with a softer expression. The specks of light in her palms shot back up through the branches as another came down to settle in his cupped hands, this one slightly bigger, and familiarly green in colour. "In the beginning, I was not alone. There was another: my counterpart, Gaia – you might know her as 'Mother Earth'. The title holds far more truth than you surely realise. I was, and am still, in love with her, body and soul."

The crease of confusion between Audrey's brows rose slightly in sympathy as she held his dejected gaze.

"What happened to her?"

"_Humans_ happened to her," he sneered, more out of heartbreak than malice, but it made Audrey flinch to see such a thing upon his divine face all the same. "The Tree of Knowledge was planted for the purpose of developing a solution to the evil we encountered during the Creation. It was like a by-product of sentience: you make a living creature that can think for itself, and you also create all the possibilities of the decisions it could make. You give it the ability to decide to be bad. We told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree because those solutions were nowhere near ripe enough to be harvested. When they defied us, we sent them away in the hope that a taste of the evil we sought to overcome would teach them the importance of _listening_ to instructions. Rules are set in place for reasons," he growled harshly, but he calmed with a sorrow that gouged at Audrey's heart as he gazed down slightly to his left, where she saw nothing, but it was clear that Iehovah was witnessing the same kind of apparition as she had just experienced with her parents. "If they'd just conceded to learn their lesson, we'd have accepted them back with open arms and forgiveness, but we completely underestimated their determination." He looked back at Audrey with a wry, melancholy smile and tears in his soft, amber eyes. "They endeavoured to work hard for the gift of life, but the necessity to maintain it became of too high a priority to them. They feared death, not knowing that it would just bring them back to Eden, where we could make them new bodies and shower them with our love, and it ignited conflict between them as their family grew, over livestock so that they could eat and women so that they could reproduce, and ideas and inventions that would make their lives easier. They fought one another to stay alive, and my beautiful Gaia grew sick with grief, and died. This was never the plan, sweet, fiery child, but you're stuck in a terrible, unfair world because there's nothing I can do about it. Not without her."

Audrey's throat constricted painfully. _We killed her._ Suddenly the weight of the angels' stares was back. She shifted nervously in the limelight.

"How come she's not mentioned in the Bible?" She asked sheepishly, and he chuckled, void of mirth.

"The _Bible,_" Iehovah scorned. "What a pile of man-written manure. She's not in there because they forgot about her, and they forgot because she wasn't there like I was, reprimanding them around every corner."

"Can't... can't you just... make her a new body like you were going to for Adam and Eve?"

"I'm sure I don't need to explain why it takes two to tango, Audrey. We might have... achieved creation with a slightly different method, but the principle is the same."

Iehovah began to turn away, his explanation given and nothing more to say, when Audrey was struck by an epiphany. The little green soul circled her excitedly, making her dizzy but sure.

"Take mine," she bid, and Iehovah froze.

Over his shoulder, a sharp gasp and a sudden movement stole her attention; Gabriel fought against Michael's grip in protest but couldn't quite bring himself to vocalise his opposition, knowing what was at stake. His cerulean eyes worked up a storm as he silently implored her not to let him go.


	19. Faith

**Author's note:** _I know, it's been a while. *sheepish* I've been settling into my new home and job, and this chapter was ridiculously difficult to write. It also happens to be my first scene of this kind, so don't judge too harshly! Enjoy. :)_

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"There must be a way to switch one soul for another?" she speculated, trying to placate her love with a gentle look.

Iehovah followed her line of sight and observed his son a moment as his futile struggling subsided, then turned back to Audrey with a small, gloomy smile.

"And sacrifice Gabriel's love for my own?" He shook his head slowly. "That'd be incredibly selfish of me, however kind your offer."

"It wasn't a request," she declared before he turned away again.

"_Audrey,_" Gabriel breathed, low and hysterical as a tear began rolling down his feather-soft cheek.

"It'll be okay," she told him, holding her arms out to signal to Michael that he could let him go. He lunged forth as his brother released him and swept her into his embrace. Audrey's eyes returned to Iehovah, who was watching with a mix of surprise, hope, uncertainty and longing. "Take my body and give it to her," she instructed him. "I know it's not great... it's definitely not fit for a Goddess, but it's something. And then once she's back, you guys will be able to create stuff again: you can make her whatever body her heart might desire, and you can put me back in my own."

"What you're suggesting is an extremely risky business," Iehovah elucidated evenly. "The switch must be timed precisely, because without a soul, a body is dead, and therefore of no use to anybody."

Audrey's confidence faltered a little, but she didn't let it show. For Gabriel's sake, she held her head high and nodded, knowing that nothing would ever change unless she took the chance.

"Do it."

Iehovah looked up at Gabriel, whose eyes were shut tight as he rested his lips against Audrey's soft, fawn hair.

"Gabriel?"

His son turned his head away in the opposite direction to lean his cheek atop her parting instead, but he nodded.

"I trust you," he whispered through his tears, tightening his arms around her.

"Very well," Iehovah concluded quietly after a pause, looking up. "The sun is setting. Go and rest; we'll carry out the procedure tomorrow."

With one last look at the couple, he returned to his bright, titian-skinned Seraphim, who lifted him back up to his balcony where he disappeared into the shade of the hollow tree, before they soared across to the smaller balcony of the one to the right and retired themselves. The Cherubim spread their sandy wings one by one, flying in single-file towards the tree to the left of Iehovah's, and some of the darker-winged angels headed for the one next to that. The rest vacated the building via the arches, leaving only the newly-reunited Archangels standing in the dying glow of the sun through the leaves above.

Gabriel remained with his face turned away towards the back wall, stock still and deathly quiet. He maintained his hold on her even when Lucifer approached.

"I get to sleep in my own bed tonight," he smiled slightly at Audrey, seemingly unsure whether to be happy or sad, "thanks to you." He reached up and brushed her errant hair off her face with his fingertips, and she smiled back.

"I only got the ball rolling," she replied modestly, rubbing soothing circles over Gabriel's back; "It was all you." Lucifer shook his head with a grin.

"Thank you, for believing in me."

She watched him use his new, vermillion-tinged wings to launch himself into the air and disappear into the last tree. Raphael followed close behind after a sympathetic smile in her direction, and Uriel took off after him as Michael padded across the mossy floor of the arena to rest a hand on Gabriel's shoulder.

"It's an incredibly brave and noble thing to do, Audrey, but you _must_ think this through." His brother lifted his head at his words, but Michael couldn't look at his terrified, tear-tracked face. "There's more than just your life riding on your decision."

With that, he stepped back and kicked off towards the tree's opening as the sun's last rays finally disappeared, leaving Gabriel and Audrey alone in the dim glow of the hundreds of candles around the arena.

Long minutes passed in the near-darkness, and the small of Audrey's back began to ache from the angle it was forced into by Gabriel's herculean grip. She reached behind her, pushing gently on his arm to try to persuade him to release her. When he never moved, she sighed and pushed against his chest in an attempt to straighten her posture.

"Gabriel," she murmured softly.

The only warning she had was the bending of his knees, and her fingers grasped at the high collar of his black tunic as the arm around the back of her waist slid down to create a seat for her, before he pulled her, somewhat angrily, into the air with his powerful, raven wings. Soaring backwards facing up at him, her heart raced but she felt no fear. She watched an ivy-adorned archway pass overhead and they were free.

The inky, purple sky held more stars than she'd ever seen, but she closed her eyes against them and pressed her mouth to Gabriel's shoulder as they sailed, silently, over Heaven. There were two beats of his great wings to every breath she took, Audrey noted, and the cotton of his tunic smelled vaguely metallic, like blood.

She thought back to when she'd awoken in the motel room to find a giant, intimidating archangel sobbing on the edge of her bed; how he'd removed his frightening, bloodstained armour, just because it made her uncomfortable. He'd been her saviour, and she'd been his.

Audrey felt their descent and opened her eyes to see willow trees passing by, and they landed on the grass with a slight jolt. Gabriel's wings folded behind him and her view was obscured by the high arc of the joint; she lifted her head and twisted in his arms to see he was climbing the steps of a dark-wooden, wisteria-entwined pergola. It was fairly small, but bigger than the marble gazebo, and the floor was covered by a thick layer of padding. A small pile of woollen blankets identical to the one she'd left on the seat at the Palace sat in the corner, and it was bordered by large bolster cushions along the low, panelled railing, which bore holes along the top holding tall, metal torch-bearers, allowing the flickering flames to light the grass and the plush, plum upholstery.

"Where are we now?" Audrey asked gently, trying to hide her exasperation; so far, she'd only managed two nights in any one place since all the chaos had begun.

He gestured with a nod towards an inscription in the railing at the back of the arbour, which read, '_Concilio Matra Divina_'.

"Council of the Divine Mother," he replied hoarsely. "She used to hold meetings here."

Setting her down on the boards of the walkway surrounding the pergola, he kept her fixed to him but wouldn't meet her gaze. Audrey reached up and tilted his face down towards her; his eyes looked all the more oceanic for the shelves of tears they held.

"Are you angry with me?" She asked, tracing the contours of his face. He closed his eyes tightly, telling her he wanted to say yes, but couldn't quite truthfully feel it.

"You've no idea what you've agreed to do," he whispered, opening his eyes to glare down at her.

"Her life is far more important than—"

"Do not presume your worth is any less!" He cut across her sharply, his frustration starting to surface. As he took her face roughly in his hands, Audrey caught a glimpse of the danger she knew him to be capable of. "Four _billion years_, I've existed, and never have I felt anything like this. I _love_ you, Audrey," he whispered, "as much as I love Them. You've presented me with an impossible choice."

"I'm not asking you to choose, Gabriel. If it works, you can have both of us."

"That's a very big 'If'."

"You seem to think I'm taking this lightly," Audrey argued, taking a step back to remove her boots, before entering the wisteria-laden pergola. "This isn't the first time I've sacrificed myself, remember?" She turned to face him in the flickering torchlight and Gabriel winced at the memory of her prone form staring up at him from the asphalt, covered in blood and dying in the pouring rain. "Last time, I had nothing left to live for. I didn't really care whether I survived, but now..." an ironic laugh fizzed through her words; "Now I'm in love, and I'm loved in return, and for the first time in my life, I trust in God. I have _everything_ to live for, and I still know I'm making the right choice."

Gabriel's head was tilted to the side in consideration, but his face was a mask of agony. He knew all too well how it felt to be absolutely sure of the path laid out ahead, but he also knew now how quickly and easily certainty could change. A salty droplet adorned his cheek, catching the dancing, orange light of the flames. He recalled his original reason for swearing to stay with her: _To restore her faith in God,_ he reminded himself. _It's done, and it's only caused me more grief._

He closed the gap between them, craving her touch, terrified of the prospect of losing her; of her stone cold, miscoloured body and her empty, aventurine eyes; of an eternal life without her uninhibited laughter, or her limitless compassion, or her soothing, remedial presence. He pressed his lips to hers, committing their warmth and rose-petal softness to memory as his thumbs ran back along the line of her jaw, coming to rest in front of her ears. He felt her silken, strawberry-brown hair beneath his fingertips and the steady rhythm of her pulse against his palms. Ingraining every tiny sensation into his heart, imploring her with all the things he couldn't find the words to say.

Audrey pressed herself into his broad frame as his lips parted, and he venerated her with the beautiful new language she'd taught him. She raised her hands to rest on his stomach, finding the wide slash through his tunic where he'd been wounded. Slipping her fingers beneath it, she was only fractionally surprised to find nothing but smooth, unblemished skin over the defined contours of his abdomen. The phantom gash had been just above his navel; she turned her hand to run the backs of her fingers down over the thin trail of soft hair below it, as far as the hole in his top would allow. Gabriel's breath hitched slightly in response and warmth caressed her lips as he hovered over them.

"Have faith," she whispered, but he silenced her instantly by resuming their kiss, lost to the strange, compelling fire her touch ignited.

Releasing her face, his hands travelled down Audrey's back, unconsciously pulling her hips closer, and she felt a distinct, growing pressure against her lower stomach. He smoothed his fingertips under the hem of her loose, white smock top, sending a shiver rolling down her spine and her heart-rate soaring. She reached around his middle to lift his tunic, but in doing so, her knuckles brushed against rigid, satin feathers, reminding her of the buttoned openings down the backs of his shoulders for his wings; reminding her that this was no ordinary man.

Audrey tugged gently down on his burly arms and he yielded, slowly stooping to his knees before her, adamant not to break the kiss. Even so, she barely had to bend at all to meet him while she set about freeing his wings. Large, warm hands ran slowly up her calves and over the backs of her knees as the neck of his tunic drooped lower with each unfastened button. She slid her fingers into the wide arms of the tunic, pushing it down, and Gabriel shrugged out of it, letting it fall around his knees.

He reluctantly let her draw away to look at him; his bare chest was thinly covered with the same fine, dark hair as his forearms, and it rose and fell faster now, mirroring her own. She leaned down to kiss the slightly paler ring of skin around his neck, where his metal collar had once blocked the sun's rays. It earned her a vigorous shudder, the breath leaving his lungs, and he caught her hips, supporting her as she dropped to her knees to join him.

Trailing her tongue and lips down the front of his trapezius to his collarbone, she savoured his hard, honest response against her stomach. One of his hands crept around her waist, securing her against him, and Audrey reached for the other, guiding it leisurely up over her ribs to cup her breast, remembering with a delirious wave of gratitude that she'd decided against wearing somebody else's undergarments when she'd changed at the motel. Under her direction, he kneaded tenderly through the thin fabric, running his thumb over her taut nipple as she gasped against his chest. Spellbound, he increased his pressure a little, of his own accord, eliciting a hushed breath of a moan from her lips.

Gabriel withdrew both his hands unexpectedly and slowly lifted her shirt, watching, enraptured, as she raised her arms to let him divest her of it, revealing the soft, creamy flesh of her torso. He stretched backwards briefly to push his boots off, drinking in the sight of her tiny, incarnadine nipples, before bending to kiss the one he'd neglected as he lowered her back to the padded floor. Audrey's breaths grew heavier as he laved it lovingly with his tongue, enchanted by the discovery of the ways in which he could affect her.

Straightening her legs between his knees, she reached up to him, finding his hips and tracing the downward grooves delicately to his waistband. She couldn't resist any longer, and stretched down to feel his solid length straining against his trousers. His low, breathless groan of appreciation rumbled from his throat before he even managed to lift his head fully, breathing hard over the sensitive, now slippery bud he'd been tending.

Azure eyes, brighter than ever and full of raw desire, met hers with a sudden shade of trepidation, finally understanding how angels could fall so epically from the Light by the mere touch of a woman, but Audrey quelled it instantly as she lifted one hand to trail circles through the short, dark hair at the base of his skull, pulling the buttons either side of the swell of his arousal from their fastenings with the other. He dipped his mouth to her neck, allowing her to continue undressing him, safe in the knowledge that she wanted this just as much.

Audrey ran her fingertips lightly down his spine between his wings as she pushed his trousers down over his hips, and he arched himself candidly closer, reaching for the opening of her shorts to follow her example. Kicking the last of his own clothing off behind him, he removed hers slowly, exposing her fully in all her natural beauty.

It had been a long time since Gabriel had looked upon a human woman's body with such admiration, and never before with the intoxicating lust he felt now. He'd never associated the two, but rather considered them wholly separate sentiments, having never loved someone in such a way before. Understanding washed over him as he realised, kneeling over her, that it was to take that which had not been offered that would be the sin, not the lust itself. He watched her turquoise eyes travel his looming body hungrily, and he smiled, forgetting the threat of losing her entirely.

Guiding him once more, Audrey moved his hand to her hip and towed his fingertips down through her curls, turning them to show him the silky, slick result of his attentions. She gasped at the slow, studious strokes he continued with as her tuition gave way to abandoned rapture. Her eyes closed and she vaguely registered her legs widening, and her thighs coming to rest atop her lover's. Adoring lips captured her own as a solid, throbbing heat pressed against her, and her quiet whimper sounded helplessly against his mouth.

"Gabriel, please," she whispered, barely disengaging their kiss to do so.

She reached down to grip his hot, hard member, caressing his velvet skin persuasively and pushing him back with her other hand, just far enough to position his head at her warm, wet entrance. Gabriel pulled his lips from hers; their mingled, impassioned breaths were loud in the narrow space between them as he glanced down anxiously, taking in their seemingly impossible difference in size, but Audrey tugged on his hips in encouragement and he slid steadily into her, burying himself completely until their bodies met. His hips rested comfortably atop hers; she felt his tense, anticipant muscles against her ribs; her soft breasts brushed against his chest and his wild, cerulean gaze touched her as thoroughly as any physical contact.

Audrey reached her arms up beneath his as he established a slow, sensual rhythm, drawing gratified sighs from her lips. She watched his surprise at the magnitude of the sensations melt into unmitigated awe; smiling widely through the mounting pleasure as his eyes closed and his pace quickened little by little, she slid her hands up his back, finding the joints where his smooth, now slightly damp skin turned to dark, silken feathers, and traced her fingertips up along the immense arc of bones that framed his wings.

Her tender exploration sent an unexpected shiver rippling through Gabriel's body and he gasped, doubling his tempo. A rhapsodic moan escaped Audrey's lips and he slipped one arm beneath the small of her back, steadying himself by her head with the other as she grazed his neck gently with kisses between ragged, whispered confessions.

A mild breeze drifted, unnoticed, through the pergola's wisteria curtain; the moon bathed the lovers in shards of dim, silver light as they crested the wave of euphoria together, before it ebbed slowly away, and they settled contentedly into the lull of exhaustion. In the blissful haze, Audrey turned her head in, eyes closed against a strange, green glow, to rest upon Gabriel's slowing heart, and the warm tingling low in her abdomen was the last thing she recalled before sleep conquered them both.


	20. The Solution

**Author's note: **_Sup guys, long time no see! My apologies; the past few months have been pretty crazy, but I'm back. I'll be resuming updates on the story's progress over on my LiveJournal (http: /hasu-hime. livejournal. com) and now also on my Tumblr (http: /hasuhime. tumblr. com), and since a few people have had questions for me recently, you can ask me anything you like on my Formspring (http: /hasuhime. formspring. com) but don't forget to remove the spaces from the links!_

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Audrey stirred as another day dawned in Paradise. Squinting against the dazzling sunrise, she allowed her eyes to adjust before slowly lifting her head from the rise and fall of the warm, fleshy pillow upon which it lay. Gabriel was still sound asleep, his face a portrait of peace.

With an adoring smile, she carefully disentangled herself from his embrace and pushed back the woollen blanket she vaguely remembered Gabriel stretching for and enveloping them both within the night before. Yawning, she dressed quietly, taking in the lavender glow of the sunlight through the curtains of wisteria surrounding the pergola, and their sweet, vanilla-like scent, amplified by the morning dew.

The task at hand was a clear one, and she had no desire to burden her love with the gravity of it. She'd go it alone, she'd decided; if it worked, it'd save Gabriel the worry of the wait, and if it didn't...

_Well, it won't come to that,_ she reassured herself, instilled with faith in God. _It all makes sense now,_ Audrey thought. _He's endured so much... all this time, without her. Because of us._ She imagined a life as long as the Lord's without Gabriel by her side; looking after a planet full of toddlers who were to blame for the death of the one she loved. It was like eternal community service for a crime that wasn't his, helping people who deserved it about as much as Hitler deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.

Audrey gasped slightly; her boots were cold on her bare feet, so, removing them once more, she opted for the damp, sun-warmed, grass between her toes as she slipped out through the lilac flora, down the wooden steps and out across the meadow surrounding her.

It was bordered by a thick forest, inhabited by every kind of tree she'd ever heard of and countless encyclopaedias worth of those she hadn't. She headed back the way they'd come the night before, towards a cluster of willow trees she recalled from the journey. Their branches formed a dense veil of leaves which, as she pulled them aside and passed under the canopies they provided, she discovered they concealed another clearing.

Much smaller than the one she'd just left, it was more of a glade, with long, lush grass growing sparsely from a pillowy carpet of moss dotted with blue and pink forget-me-nots. Down the centre, leading on through the trees, was a soft, earthy trail, but it had all but overgrown, as though it were once travelled as regularly as the sun across the periwinkle sky. On one side of the path was a loveseat, made of ancient, weathered blocks of stone, covered in moss just like the forest floor and sprouting tiny, white flowers of its own. Directly opposite, on the other side of the trail, grew a tree.

She hadn't noticed it to begin with, because at first glance it was just a younger version of its giant, willow neighbours. It was smaller – she could easily have reached its lower boughs without stretching, and its branches were the same long, leafy vines, rustling as they swayed with the breeze. Stepping closer, however, she noticed that it bore hundreds upon thousands of tiny, grape-like berries, translucent-white with greenish centres and no bigger than peas. They gave off a unique aroma, she noticed, like sweet apple guava mixed with cardamom and a hint of firewood. Taking the seductive scent deep into her lungs, she closed her eyes.

It was such a rich, irresistible fragrance; luscious darkness engulfed her senses. Hungrily, she opened her eyes, raising her fingertips towards a cluster of pearlescent fruit. They glistened with dew in the dappled morning light of the forest, their chartreuse centres like...

Audrey paused as a bright, lime star bounced around her mind. _Not a star..._ she deduced, her thoughts straining to pull away. _A soul. Gaia. God's lost love._

_Love... _Her hand retreated slowly. _Gabriel. Sleeping, in the pergola, in Eden. _Blinking at the berries before her, she realised what she was looking at. _Fruit._

Shaking her head clear, breathing as though she'd been running for days, Audrey drove temptation from her thoughts with such force that a powerful pulse of light rolled off her like a wave. It lapped away every shadow within, cleansing her as she stumbled feebly backwards, and the wave continued out through the branches before her.

Large, warm arms caught her from behind, and an avalanche of suddenly ripe, perfectly clear berries cascaded from their curtain of branches and fell in a circular range of crystalline mountains.

"Gabriel?" Audrey guessed, fighting to catch her breath as she was lifted from the mossy ground and set down upon the cool, stone seat, but as her rescuer crouched in front of her, also barefoot, on the rocks atop which the seat was built, her heart sank. The sandy-headed Father's incredulous features came into view as he tore his gaze from the Tree of Knowledge and turned to look at her. "I'm s... I'm sorry," she pleaded, her words tumbling and her heart doubling in pace as guilty tears flooded her vision. "I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean... I never meant to—"

"I don't believe it," Iehovah whispered, sending Audrey into a panicked flurry of tears. "You've no idea what you've done." The air was still and the forest silent; it seemed as though Eden, in its entirety, had stopped and turned to watch history repeat itself.

"I'm so s-sorry," she sobbed, barely louder than a summer breeze. "I—"

"Shhh," he hushed, rising to sit beside her, before pulling her into his fatherly embrace. Chuckling with giddy disbelief, he took her by the shoulders and pulled back to look at her. "My child, you don't understand. They're ready! You did it!"

Audrey blinked as Iehovah brushed a runaway tear from her cheek.

"W... What?"

"They've finally fallen. They're ripe!" he replied.

"But my... whatever that was... they were _shaken_ loose."

"Did your _Elatio Divina_ also alter their colour?" Audrey paused.

"I don't know, you tell me," she shrugged.

Smiling sagely, he held her face tenderly in the hands which had both created and destroyed; loved and punished. They were soft, yet strong, and warm as the spring sun on her wet cheeks.

"Do you not think I'd have tried cleansing them before? Blessing them? The rainwater which nourishes them? The soil that nurtures them? Do you not think that I've had my beloved Gaia and every angelic being we've ever created stand together, around that very place, and light up this clearing so brightly that it bled through into your world, causing the repetitive echo which you recognise as the Northern Lights? So powerful that because of the way in which the Earth's magnetic poles were made, the echo is mirrored on the opposite side of the planet?"

"I... Whoa." Iehovah chuckled once more, nodding once.

"How did you do it? How did you resist it? Not to sound arrogant, by any means, but even I was unable."

"I don't know," she answered truthfully. "...Wait, what?"

Releasing her shoulders, he looked down at his hands, and in the second his amber eyes were fixed there before returning to Audrey's gaze, they had filled with such immense pain and guilt, she could hardly bear to look.

"A few years ago, around the time when you were born, Audrey, prophecies began surfacing in your world. Each bore a different message; each was channelled by a different prophet, and none of them made any particular sense. I didn't understand – I still don't; they weren't coming from me.

The only other entity remaining, powerful enough to create these messages, is Satan. So, that's the assumption I made, and I couldn't let evil gain the upper hand. I tried to offset the balance, because without balance the future cannot be foretold. I orchestrated miracles: rain to remedy droughts; antibodies to help combat deadly sicknesses; even small, personal cases, like expanding the aortic valve of a child undergoing heart surgery, to prevent it from obstructing the blood flow and ultimately killing him.

I should have known better than to meddle. Satan was quick off the mark. The atmospheric changes I made to send rain caused a domino effect that led to several devastating natural disasters, killing millions. The survivors of the sickness were among dead. The child with the defective heart lived, but the little girl for whom his perfectly healthy liver was intended never stood a chance."

Audrey's fingertips found their way, unconsciously, to her lips, as she listened to the Lord's tormented story.

"No tragedies were averted. It's impossible, while evil still thrives. Satan, as far as I could tell, had some treacherous plot in the making, and there was, apparently, absolutely nothing I could do.

I created another Incarnation, in the same way I created Jesus. Without Gaia, I cannot create life from scratch, but I _can_ split a soul into two parts. Neither can I prevent the natural creation of life, but I _can _make it possible for two souls to coexist within one vessel, so long as only one of them is whole. Like a man and his conscience, if you will. So, within the unborn son of a young waitress with immeasurable, unfaltering love to protect her, I imbued a fragment of my own."

"Charlie and Jeep," Audrey realised aloud.

"It was a plan which would take time and patience while the child grew into a man, and unfortunately, time ran out before he even made it into the world.

Another prophecy surfaced. _The child brings forth destruction, from which a new path shall arise._" He sighed heavily, lowering his forehead to his palms. "Still assuming that Satan was behind the cryptic messages, I interpreted it to mean that, somehow, my Incarnation would be manipulated for evil's gain.

I came here, to think." Raising his head, he rested his lips against his clasped fingers as he spoke. "Gaia and I used to sit in this very spot, overlooking the tree we cultivated together with our knowledge. We'd discuss the matter for days on end: how does one eradicate evil, the darkness of the soul, from sentient life? I'd hoped for an epiphany," he smirked briefly, "in both senses of the word.

Sure enough, her soul came to me, and I held it in my hand. She looked at me, for it was all she capable of," Iehovah's voice wavered with grief, and Audrey reached out to enclose his hand with hers, squeezing it gently, imploring him to go on. As he did so, he rose from the stone seat, pulling her up with him, and guided her carefully down the descending rocks, back to the soft, green moss.

"Like you, I strayed too close to the fruit," he told her, leading her across the clearing towards the newly-fallen berries. "She walked with me, but by the time I got to here," he stopped a few feet from the branches and turned to Audrey, "I was so overcome by desperation to find the solution, and the intoxicating lure of the berries, I'd let go of her."

"So... you ate one?"

"A whole handful," he confessed ashamedly, picking up the topmost fruit of the nearest pile to avoid meeting her gaze. "It's all my fault. Your parents and eighty-four percent of the world's population... my creations... our beloved children. They're all dead, because of me."

Audrey reeled. _Eighty-four percent?_ She'd seen it for herself, experienced the brutal damage first-hand, but the figure weighed heavily on her all the same.

Iehovah handed her the berry. It sat, sparkling in her palm like a giant droplet of water. There was no alluring scent; no aching hunger. She looked up at the contrite Creator, and with no need for fruit, she knew.

"You're wrong," she identified. Iehovah finally looked her in the eye.

"I assure you, Audrey, it was I who gave the order for humanity's extermination."

"Under the influence of the fruit." He nodded in accord. "I believe you, but you're wrong. I know now, how I did it; how I made the berries ripen and fall." Iehovah listened intently, quietly certain of his accuracy, but more interested in the solution this young, human girl had found when he could not. "_The key approaches in the form of love._ When I resisted them, I was able to because I had something better; something that gave me hope. I have Gabriel. I have love." She took a step closer, watching revelation wash over him as she spoke, and the anguish it undeniably caused. "You failed because you had nothing to pull you back. Your love was taken from you, by us." Reaching up, she placed the crystalline berry between his lips as he opened them for her. "The fault is ours, and it's ours to put right."

As one diamond was swallowed, another escaped the lonely Shepherd's solar eyes, blazing with renewed faith in the hope she spoke of. He hardly dared to believe it could be, but the fruit's purity diffused through his body, and clarity conquered his mind, showing him what must be done.


	21. Immortal Love

The dazzling grin that crept slowly across Iehovah's face, when comprehension claimed his mind, was the only inclination of his plans it seemed he felt like sharing. Briefly closing his eyes, he called upon his archangels with a whisper.

"Michael; Gabriel; Lucifer; Raphael; Uriel." The names drifted like dandelion seeds through the hushed space between them, and within moments the prevalent sound of beating wings broke the silence as each of the mighty archangels touched down around them.

"Raphael; Uriel:" Iehovah addressed his sons, his eyes fixed upon the little saviour before him. The archangels' gaze fell upon the circle of diamond-like berries beneath the Tree of Knowledge with no small amount of incredulity and anticipation. "Summon the seraphim and have them guard the vicinity. Michael; Lucifer: assemble the Host and station them for the Final Battle as you see fit." This stole the brothers' attention away from the fruit, one or two gasps imparting from their midst. "Gabriel," He held out his hand to Audrey, who took it, confused but without hesitance. "Come," he bid excitedly, "there isn't much time."

His hand was warm, but rougher than she'd expected, like that of a dedicated gardener. Towing her along as he hurried around the ancient, stone seat and through another veil of sweeping branches, he left all but one of his beloved archangels to their respective tasks. His sandy hair shone golden in the sporadic patches of almost-midday sun that permeated the thick, emerald canopy. Though his muted teal trousers were fitted around the ankles, they had developed dark hems where the morning dew on the long grass had soaked them.

He led them to an adjacent clearing, identical to the one they'd just left, except that in place of the Tree of Knowledge, there stood another: again, with very close resemblance to a willow, but this time bearing much larger fruit: the strangest and most wonderful she'd ever seen.

They were similar to the cape gooseberry in that they were encased within bulbous, skeleton-leaf husks, bright gold in colour, like filigree cages. The gleaming, cerulean fruit within were pumpkin-shaped, tapering to a point below, and Audrey's speculations on the inspiration for the colour of her angelic lover's eyes were suddenly disbanded. About the size of large pomegranates, they hung in long garlands among the supple, swaying branches, their husks glittering as they moved.

Releasing Audrey, Iehovah reached to pluck one from the nearest vine. It tugged free easily, and he turned to her, placing it in her cupped hands. Glancing between her utterly baffled expression, and Gabriel's awestruck stare, he raised one hand high above his head. Immediately, a tiny, peridot speck of pulsing light flew into his palm from between the branches above, and he closed his fingers around it, pulling it down near his heart.

"Eat it," Iehovah bid her, but she merely blinked in response, glancing down at the gift. "This, my child, is the Tree of Life."

Audrey returned her gaze to the gentle Father, wondering what to make of the situation. _More fruit? Gaia's soul? Battle stations? _Questions circled relentlessly in her mind, but one put forth a worry that jabbed dangerously at her sensibilities: _Was there going to be an attack? By whom? Surely he didn't mean to pick up the extermination where he left off? Had the berry he'd eaten induced the same brutal desperation in him as before?_

"I don't understand; what's going on?" She asked, her heart beginning to flutter with panic.

Iehovah stepped closer, measuring the young saint with a fond smile. He relinquished the little, green soul, which danced lazily around them as he set about peeling back the fruit's husk.

"You are an extraordinarily pure soul, Audrey." She looked sceptically up at this, but he paid no mind, continuing his ministrations as though it had escaped his notice. "A recovered soul. Once arrogant and selfish, wishing only for attention, cultivated by loneliness in the absence of your hardworking parents. In exactly seven days, you have achieved something that most never quite manage in their whole lives." He looked up at her now, pulling away the remnants of the husk, leaving only the bright, succulent fruit resting in her fingers. "You've grown up."

"Seven days..?" Audrey thought aloud. _Surely it can't be... seven days since that fateful breakdown at Paradise Falls? Seven days since she lost the one person who ever remotely understood her?_

"Yes," Iehovah allowed himself a smirk, misunderstanding her astonishment, "the irony wasn't lost on me either. Seven days to create; seven days to evolve." Bending slightly to look squarely into her aventurine eyes, he placed his hands upon her shoulders. "You have _evolved_, Audrey. You have become precisely what I'd intended humanity to be all along. You've shown initiative in delivering the child, bravery in defending him, patience in consoling he who was sent to destroy you, justice in your resolute endeavours to clear Lucifer's name, and compassion in your offer to help revive Gaia.

This day has been such a long time coming, child. Satan will have noticed the shift in the balance when you ripened the fruit. It will inevitably attack, and soon. My angels can hold it at bay for only a short time, and you saw the difficulty with which I expelled the evil residing within Lucifer. I need _her_. I _cannot_ do this alone." Audrey nodded briskly in compliance, understanding now, the urgency of whatever this plan was he'd formulated. "So, if your offer still stands; if you're still willing to help bring her back –"

"It does," she affirmed without hesitation; "I am."

Iehovah gently raised her cupped hands with his palm beneath them, imploring her to eat.

"Fruit from the Tree of Life will grant you immortality," he explained, watching her turquoise eyes widen. "It will make the exchange of souls infallible, and afterwards, allow you to live out an infinite life here in Eden with the one you love."

Audrey glanced down at the fruit mere inches from her lips; the sweet, tantalising smell invaded her senses as forcefully as the berries had, but it was a different kind of allure. Instead of the berries' seductive, intoxicating pull, this fruit's scent was full of promise: life, love and an irrefutable sense of family.

"You're giving me immortality?" She asked in barely more than a whisper, hardly daring to believe she'd never have to worry about belonging to a different world to the man she loved.

"A small gift for kindness of such magnitude," he replied with an affectionate smile.

Transferring her gaze, then, to the joyously stunned archangel she called her lover, she sank her teeth into the fleshy, azure fruit. It was tangy but not offensive; sweet and satisfying as a slice of watermelon on a hot, summer day. Her eyes flickered shut and juice dribbled perpetually down her chin. Something warm alit in her chest, spreading through her veins, from her grass-stained toes to the sticky tips of her fingers, and a calm settled over her, the likes of which she'd never experienced.

She was vaguely aware of her knees slowly bending, lowering her steadily under the fruit's relaxing spell, but before she reached the lush, green grass, a pair of arms, much larger and more familiar than those which had rescued her at the Tree of Knowledge, lifted her with ease. She was cradled against a warm torso, her cheek nestling against soft cotton; a tender kiss was placed upon her hairline, and she was submersed in a serene slumber, her mind peaceful, breathing even, swathed in love.

Slowly – ever so slowly, her vision returned, but her eyes were not open. A bright, chartreuse haze passed over her, and she tried to raise her arm against the glare but found herself unable. She was drifting weightlessly, and as the light subsided, a lesser, pinkish glow replaced it. Tethered to some sort of wall textured with shallow grooves all over, she was drawn forward and released; the wall, she noticed as it retreated, was a hand. Dense forest came into view; huge rocks, crawling with insects; sunlit grass speckled with mauve-veined spring beauties; knots in wood; a squirrel hopping through branches; larks soaring overhead; the tear-laden, citrine eyes of the Father; the exquisitely-shaped lips of her angel, and her own slight form, stirring in his arms, opening her amazonite eyes.

It was done.


End file.
